Thursday, December 30, 2010

Snowboarding with the Nikon D700



My son William has a T-shirt business called Wolves VS Lions. It seems to be doing well.
As I do photography for his company, I am stretched beyond what the studio work I normally do and it helps to broaden my experience and test Nikon's D700 as well.
We did these shots at Mountain Creek in New Jersey. Two young ladies offered to be models and for light on this night shoot, I bought a Brinkmann flood light at Wal*Mart as I drove to the mountain. My son (since he was the client) was in charge of keeping the light on the snowboarders and I set the Nikon to ISO 6400, and continuous high shooting with a 28-300mm auto focus lens. I just focused at the end of the tube and hit the trigger when one of the girls got there and followed them along the very slippery tube.
I was amazed at this little camera. Out of 6GB of images (around 200) I missed focus on only one image! The Nikon followed and continually focused as the camera shot image after image. At ISO 6400 the noise looked like grain (I love grain) and was easily modified in Camera Raw. The battery only went from 100% to 85% even in the very cold weather. I have the MB-10 attached so I think I could have shot for over 4 hours but I got too cold out there.
Well, this photo thing is still fun and I am still learning. I think I prefer the warmth and control of the studio though.....