Ok, well today is going to be a short and sweet post. I have been really busy the last couple of days. I am heading into a totally insane weekend too. You see, I am going to be the sole photographer covering the fashion shows at Perth’s Every Woman Expo 2009, which is being held at the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre.
I have shot this event and many like it before. When I first started shooting fashion runway parades I was using my old faithful Fujifilm S2 Pro. It worked well but I had to bring along my own lighting in the form of two Bowens Gemini 500w/s heads that were set-off by a wireless trigger on my hot shoe. I needed to bring the lights so I could be sure of providing enough light within the venue to enable me to shoot at 100ISO – therefore keeping the files nice and squeaky clean with very little noise.
Of course the problem with using big ol’ studio strobes to light a venue means you have to manually set them so they meter to a spot about 2/3rd’s down the runway. Which works most of the time, but I used to spend the majority of the show with my thumb on the aperture adjustment dial chasing the models up and down the runway either side of the metered spot I had set before the show.
Along came the Fuji S3 Pro - a truly remarkable camera for it's day, so I bought one based on my love-hate relationship with the S2. The high ISO performance was oh so much better than the S2 but I still had to bring the strobes along. This was starting to get annoying. But I put up with it because of the colour these little Fuji's were producing. There is no other way to describe it than beautiful.
Then I got myself a (back then) brand new Fujifilm S5 Pro. I loved it so much I bought another one. These two sweet little bodies are to this day my work-horses and they do not disappoint. They work so much better in lower light than the S2 and S3. But they still don’t work as well in low light as some…
So today with great anticipation I bought home a Nikon D700 to play with for the weekend. At the last fashion show I shot, Jailhouse Frock 2009 which was held at the old Fremantle Prison the ambient light at the venue was very low. So low in fact that I had to put my SB-900 on top of the S5, even though I already had the ISO set to about 1000. The images turned out great and I really really, yes really love the colour rendition that all of my Fuji’s since the S2 put’s into skin tones. They are simply gorgeous. Whack on a flash though, especially an “on-axis” hot shoe flash and things were starting to burn out here and there, and a little too frequently for my liking. I tried turning the flash off all-together and turning the ISO all the way up to 3200. This mostly solved the problem for me. The high ISO wasn’t creating all that much noise but the image sharpness does start to suffer a little due to the in-camera noise reduction algorithm. But, as well as the Fuji handles high ISO’s like water off a ducks back, I couldn’t help but keep glancing over to another photographer just to my left. She was snapping away all night, bam – bam – bam – no flash – and from what I could see occasionally popping up on the LCD screen were some simply fantastic images. At the end of the show, upon closer inspection she was shooting with a Nikon D700. And that was it. I had to have one.
And I am half-way there to getting one too. But I needed one this weekend and I haven’t quite got the funds together so I have turned to the great institution that is equipment hire! I have been playing with the camera tonight and I am surprised how easy it is to get around, even after using nothing but Fuji’s for the last 5 years or so. I know what you are thinking, Fuji’s are just Nikons in… um, Fuji clothing. And you are 100% correct. However the menu system is totally different on a Fuji.
Anyway, there you go. I am in love with the D700 – well at least on the operational and handling side of things. The build is exemplary. That 920k dot LCD screen on the back is good enough to watch HDTV on – I kid you not. I have a couple of reservations about how it will render skin tones, but then I have been spoilt by the super colour rendition of my Fuji’s.
Time will tell. This time tomorrow night I will either be listing all of my Fuji bodies on eBay to make way for 2 new D700’s or I’ll keep to the intended impending purchase of at least one D700 for use when I really need to ramp the ISO’s up and I will be hanging on to my dearly beloved Fuji’s for some time to come…
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