I just got my Z8's (update)
May 28, 2023 18:23:19 #
Update to my original post. . . Thanks to all who replied. All of the information given was greatly appreciated.
A caveat. I mentioned I was shooting several graduations. On my final graduation shoot my job was to take a picture of each graduate in front of a white step and repeat backdrop with the school's logo, holding their diploma, as he/she exited the stage. Another colleague was taking the actual grip 'n' grin on stage. We were photographing approximately 450 graduates at approximately 5 second intervals. I arrived early. I did test shots in the arena under the ambient lighting using an on camera fill flash. Each test shot was right on the money. (did I mention I love this camera!). The moment of truth arrived, and some yahoo thought it would be very dramatic to turn all the lights in the arena off, except for a spot light on the students as they received the diploma. The rest of the arena was in near darkness. The first student arrived in front of the backdrop, I pushed the button and. . . NOTHING happened. Five seconds later the next student arrived, then the third. . . I was frantic. By time the sixth student arrived I realized the problem was there wasn't enough light for the camera to focus. The camera sent out a green focus assist beam but in the darkness the camera refused to work. The camera will not fire if it cannot achieve focus. When I realized this I asked an assistant to open a nearby exit door to the outside allowing sunlight in. This allowed me to lock the focus on the backdrop before the students stepped in front of it. Once this happened everything went off without a problem. I only hope those first six will not be looking for their picture. In retrospect, even if I had the camera shutter set to trip regardless of focus. Those images would probably not have been of good quality.
A caveat. I mentioned I was shooting several graduations. On my final graduation shoot my job was to take a picture of each graduate in front of a white step and repeat backdrop with the school's logo, holding their diploma, as he/she exited the stage. Another colleague was taking the actual grip 'n' grin on stage. We were photographing approximately 450 graduates at approximately 5 second intervals. I arrived early. I did test shots in the arena under the ambient lighting using an on camera fill flash. Each test shot was right on the money. (did I mention I love this camera!). The moment of truth arrived, and some yahoo thought it would be very dramatic to turn all the lights in the arena off, except for a spot light on the students as they received the diploma. The rest of the arena was in near darkness. The first student arrived in front of the backdrop, I pushed the button and. . . NOTHING happened. Five seconds later the next student arrived, then the third. . . I was frantic. By time the sixth student arrived I realized the problem was there wasn't enough light for the camera to focus. The camera sent out a green focus assist beam but in the darkness the camera refused to work. The camera will not fire if it cannot achieve focus. When I realized this I asked an assistant to open a nearby exit door to the outside allowing sunlight in. This allowed me to lock the focus on the backdrop before the students stepped in front of it. Once this happened everything went off without a problem. I only hope those first six will not be looking for their picture. In retrospect, even if I had the camera shutter set to trip regardless of focus. Those images would probably not have been of good quality.
May 28, 2023 20:07:27 #
Sad. I would have tried to identify the students who I missed and asked them to redo the images.
May 29, 2023 07:40:33 #
Quick thinking to get that side-door opened; those oblivious "yahoo's" can be a pain...One nightmare graduation I observed, (but thankfully did not shoot!), was when, at the last minute, the administrative "yahoo" decided to reverse the direction the graduates mounted the stage. The photographer, all set up with his lights & tripod, (like at the practice the night before) ended up shooting the backs of the graduates, none of the faces were visible, just 300 photos of a happily grinning President, shaking hands with black robes.
May 29, 2023 08:29:42 #
Sidwalkastronomy
Loc: New Jersey Shore
With all these Mr Murphy moments I am careful about making ANY comments to photograph important events. I'm not a pro so I can decline
May 29, 2023 09:14:03 #
May 29, 2023 10:48:06 #
May 29, 2023 13:05:43 #
I have shot in near darkness in the jungle without too much difficulty. Increase ISO, put camera in starlight mode and manually focus.
May 29, 2023 14:06:13 #
Sidwalkastronomy
Loc: New Jersey Shore
I was taking a photo of a partial eclipse rising sun out of the ocean. I couldn't figure out why camera wasn't shooting so I changed cameras. By this time the sun was up a little and camera worked. Before this I never realized if I was out of focus,the shutter wouldn't release, now I do
May 30, 2023 00:38:45 #
Parfumeur
Loc: Forest Hills, NY USA
Let us know how the pictures turned out in post after you got the light from the open door....
May 30, 2023 10:02:20 #
Parfumeur wrote:
Let us know how the pictures turned out in post after you got the light from the open door....
This was "down and dirty" photography, no posing, get the shot and move on, every five seconds. Camera worked beautifully once I had light, Lens was nikon 24-120 f/4. Students were wearing maroon gowns. I prefocused on the "N" on the backdrop before the student came into the photo depth of field did the rest.
May 30, 2023 20:10:18 #
Gilkar wrote:
This was "down and dirty" photography, no posing, get the shot and move on, every five seconds. Camera worked beautifully once I had light, Lens was nikon 24-120 f/4. Students were wearing maroon gowns. I prefocused on the "N" on the backdrop before the student came into the photo depth of field did the rest.
May 30, 2023 21:20:38 #
Cheers and best to you, you did a great job at that graduation with your Z8.
A True story:
Back during the Ronald Reagan US Presidency, while I was a staff photographer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Reagan decided to attend one High School graduation and shake the hands of each graduate as they crossed the stage. Reagan chose Glassboro, N. J, Public High School to attend and participate.
Why Glassboro, NJ, well Glassboro NJ was the famous location of an historic US-Russian Presidential summit (halfway between NYC and D.C.).
My Photo Editor announced that the Inquirer would photograph every graduate with Pres. Reagan and publish all 300+ photos in the newspaper the next day. Glassboro, NJ is a suburb of Philadelphia, Pa. and in our coverage and circulation area.
The Inquirer had all the long Nikon SLR lenses I would need to shoot from the press area in the rear of the Glassboro High School auditorium. And we had one of the Nikon SLR 50-foot long 35mm roll film motorized backs as we would have just a second or two to make each shot of the graduates shaking Reagan's hand as they crossed the stage. My Editor picked me to do the photography of each graduate while other staffers would do photo coverage outside as Reagan arrived and departed in Marine One copter, and another Inquirer photographer in the small pool of wire shooters allowed to be up front in the auditorium. An Inquirer photo intern was assigned to be my assistant in the rear.
Well I didn't trust all this to one camera. i called Nikon and sure enough they told me these long 35mm film roll motorized backs tended to jam if used constantly before the roll was finished . So against my Editor's advice I had Nikon send us another exact same long roll back. So I went with two complete Nikon setups with two 400mm f2.8 lenses on two tripods setup in advance in the rear of the auditorium. Everyone thought I was being over cautious. Of course we had to be credentialed and searched by the Secret Service to even cover this event.
I had all my gear and credentials checked by the Secret Service, set up my two tripods, squeezed between all the other shooters. The ceremony started and I started to shoot each graduate with Reagan, time for one frame only with the President, but a few female grads leaned over to kiss him and I risked it and made additional shots.
Sure enough midway through the 300+ grads one of the Nikon backs jammed. With no time at all to do anything about it, I quickly moved over to my second Nikon SLR w/ second 400mm f2.8 and second motorized long roll back and kept shooting. My supposed assistant , the intern, had gone off on her own to make her own photos of the first President she had ever been that close to, leaving me with no one to help with all my gear, as I changed setups. LOL
Around my shoulder the whole time was my own Canon SLR with a 400mm f4 lens attached. I used both Nikon and Canon gear. As luck or providence would have it, the second Nikon long roll motorized back jammed near the end of all the 300+ graduates. I left that camera on its tripod and grabbed up my Canon and 400mm lens and shot handheld as the last six graduates shook hands with Reagan.
I had really worked up a sweat by then, and as Reagan departed and the press started to pack up their gear, our runner came by and collected both Nikon roll backs and the roll from my Canon and raced off to drive back to the Inquirer offices to process all the film in our automated film processor.
My intern assistant was nowhere to be found, so I had to pack all the cases and schlep all the gear myself back out to my car. Thankfully some security guards watched over my gear on the press platform as I had to make a couple of trips back and forth to my car to collect everything. Found out the intern had left me and driven back to the newspaper in her car to get her film processed.
Bets were being taken back at the newspaper that our often finicky film processor would jam with such long continuous rolls of film to process and ruin the film, but the processor worked flawlessly. While the graduation was being televised live, we had another photo editor back at the paper who was recording the entire program. We used that to identify each graduate one by one with their name being called.
Everyone mobilized at the paper to make it happen and yes the next day we published a special section in our newspaper with every graduate's photo with Reagan, some of the kiss shots were used for some graduates. We had every student, every name. Thank goodness I took ALL three camera setups or it would not have been possible.
I never want to go through something like that again. That still stands as the most photos in any single issue of the Inquirer made by a single shooter. Yes we also published some shots from our pool photographer at the front of the auditorium and from my absent intern assistant, LOL
FYI, I was briefly a White House photo intern under Presidential Photographer David Kennerly during the Ford Administration and I have photographed every US President from Nixon through Biden.
I probably photographed Reagan the most of all the US Presidents I have photographed, from inauguration to his funeral. Here a shot from Reagan's funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. with the Reagan family and all the other living Presidents at the time, Congress, Supreme Court, Cabinet leaders, foreign leaders and more.
Click on download to see better image quality .
NOTE: The Philadelphia Inquirer has changed ownership a few time since then, so no longer are any galleries of that day still online. My copies of that special section are all in a box in my storage locker since I moved from my large home in New Jersey to my present smaller home in Texas in 2017. I have made millions of shots professionally and dont have all my film shots digitized, sorry. If I come across one from that day, I will post it.
The Atlantic City Press still has some photos online up from that day. You can see them here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Philadelphia+Inquirer+photo%2C+President+Reagan+at+Glassboro+High+school+graduation%2C&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi9y9m1tZ7_AhVXLN4AHSX1ASYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Philadelphia+Inquirer+photo%2C+President+Reagan+at+Glassboro+High+school+graduation%2C&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoECCMQJ1AAWP4IYIoaaABwAHgAgAFdiAGmA5IBATaYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=caR2ZP3OJNfY-LYPpeqHsAI&bih=721&biw=1536
Cheers
A True story:
Back during the Ronald Reagan US Presidency, while I was a staff photographer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Reagan decided to attend one High School graduation and shake the hands of each graduate as they crossed the stage. Reagan chose Glassboro, N. J, Public High School to attend and participate.
Why Glassboro, NJ, well Glassboro NJ was the famous location of an historic US-Russian Presidential summit (halfway between NYC and D.C.).
My Photo Editor announced that the Inquirer would photograph every graduate with Pres. Reagan and publish all 300+ photos in the newspaper the next day. Glassboro, NJ is a suburb of Philadelphia, Pa. and in our coverage and circulation area.
The Inquirer had all the long Nikon SLR lenses I would need to shoot from the press area in the rear of the Glassboro High School auditorium. And we had one of the Nikon SLR 50-foot long 35mm roll film motorized backs as we would have just a second or two to make each shot of the graduates shaking Reagan's hand as they crossed the stage. My Editor picked me to do the photography of each graduate while other staffers would do photo coverage outside as Reagan arrived and departed in Marine One copter, and another Inquirer photographer in the small pool of wire shooters allowed to be up front in the auditorium. An Inquirer photo intern was assigned to be my assistant in the rear.
Well I didn't trust all this to one camera. i called Nikon and sure enough they told me these long 35mm film roll motorized backs tended to jam if used constantly before the roll was finished . So against my Editor's advice I had Nikon send us another exact same long roll back. So I went with two complete Nikon setups with two 400mm f2.8 lenses on two tripods setup in advance in the rear of the auditorium. Everyone thought I was being over cautious. Of course we had to be credentialed and searched by the Secret Service to even cover this event.
I had all my gear and credentials checked by the Secret Service, set up my two tripods, squeezed between all the other shooters. The ceremony started and I started to shoot each graduate with Reagan, time for one frame only with the President, but a few female grads leaned over to kiss him and I risked it and made additional shots.
Sure enough midway through the 300+ grads one of the Nikon backs jammed. With no time at all to do anything about it, I quickly moved over to my second Nikon SLR w/ second 400mm f2.8 and second motorized long roll back and kept shooting. My supposed assistant , the intern, had gone off on her own to make her own photos of the first President she had ever been that close to, leaving me with no one to help with all my gear, as I changed setups. LOL
Around my shoulder the whole time was my own Canon SLR with a 400mm f4 lens attached. I used both Nikon and Canon gear. As luck or providence would have it, the second Nikon long roll motorized back jammed near the end of all the 300+ graduates. I left that camera on its tripod and grabbed up my Canon and 400mm lens and shot handheld as the last six graduates shook hands with Reagan.
I had really worked up a sweat by then, and as Reagan departed and the press started to pack up their gear, our runner came by and collected both Nikon roll backs and the roll from my Canon and raced off to drive back to the Inquirer offices to process all the film in our automated film processor.
My intern assistant was nowhere to be found, so I had to pack all the cases and schlep all the gear myself back out to my car. Thankfully some security guards watched over my gear on the press platform as I had to make a couple of trips back and forth to my car to collect everything. Found out the intern had left me and driven back to the newspaper in her car to get her film processed.
Bets were being taken back at the newspaper that our often finicky film processor would jam with such long continuous rolls of film to process and ruin the film, but the processor worked flawlessly. While the graduation was being televised live, we had another photo editor back at the paper who was recording the entire program. We used that to identify each graduate one by one with their name being called.
Everyone mobilized at the paper to make it happen and yes the next day we published a special section in our newspaper with every graduate's photo with Reagan, some of the kiss shots were used for some graduates. We had every student, every name. Thank goodness I took ALL three camera setups or it would not have been possible.
I never want to go through something like that again. That still stands as the most photos in any single issue of the Inquirer made by a single shooter. Yes we also published some shots from our pool photographer at the front of the auditorium and from my absent intern assistant, LOL
FYI, I was briefly a White House photo intern under Presidential Photographer David Kennerly during the Ford Administration and I have photographed every US President from Nixon through Biden.
I probably photographed Reagan the most of all the US Presidents I have photographed, from inauguration to his funeral. Here a shot from Reagan's funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. with the Reagan family and all the other living Presidents at the time, Congress, Supreme Court, Cabinet leaders, foreign leaders and more.
Click on download to see better image quality .
NOTE: The Philadelphia Inquirer has changed ownership a few time since then, so no longer are any galleries of that day still online. My copies of that special section are all in a box in my storage locker since I moved from my large home in New Jersey to my present smaller home in Texas in 2017. I have made millions of shots professionally and dont have all my film shots digitized, sorry. If I come across one from that day, I will post it.
The Atlantic City Press still has some photos online up from that day. You can see them here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Philadelphia+Inquirer+photo%2C+President+Reagan+at+Glassboro+High+school+graduation%2C&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi9y9m1tZ7_AhVXLN4AHSX1ASYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Philadelphia+Inquirer+photo%2C+President+Reagan+at+Glassboro+High+school+graduation%2C&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoECCMQJ1AAWP4IYIoaaABwAHgAgAFdiAGmA5IBATaYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=caR2ZP3OJNfY-LYPpeqHsAI&bih=721&biw=1536
Cheers
Jun 4, 2023 10:01:01 #
Sharing this on each Z8 thread:
As I expected, the new Nikon Z8 has gone to the top of the latest Yodobashi top ten sales list in Japan.
Yodobashi top ten sales: May 15-May 30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTzYIUIcUWQ
1) Nikon Z8
2) Sony A74
3) Nikon Z9
4) Sony A74 kit
5) Sony A7R5
6) Canon R50 kit
7) Sony FX3
8) Canon R8
9) Nikon ZFC
10) Canon R6 II
Cheers and best to you all, whatever your favorite brand is.
As I expected, the new Nikon Z8 has gone to the top of the latest Yodobashi top ten sales list in Japan.
Yodobashi top ten sales: May 15-May 30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTzYIUIcUWQ
1) Nikon Z8
2) Sony A74
3) Nikon Z9
4) Sony A74 kit
5) Sony A7R5
6) Canon R50 kit
7) Sony FX3
8) Canon R8
9) Nikon ZFC
10) Canon R6 II
Cheers and best to you all, whatever your favorite brand is.
Jun 9, 2023 10:04:11 #
Jun 9, 2023 12:06:08 #
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