Eric Johnson and a "OMG" Nikon, a Saga

[dfindr]

OK, so there is a story here . . . I find myself with tickets for an Eric Johnson concert. A couple of weeks back. Club policy is that cameras allowed, just no flash, and no professionals, which I certainly am not. I split time between Alaska and Arizona. Of course the concert in Arizona. Of course all the Canon gear, good bodies 1DIII, 1DSIII, and fast L lenses 70-200 f/2.8 IS, etc in Alaska. What to do?

So I go with a friend who just happens to have a Nikon D-80, with a real consumer grade 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 or something like that.. I say to myself, this is going to be rich. I know nothing about Nikons much less the D-80. Well anyway, without my beloved Canons I say to myself “what the hell” and attempt to make the best of a bad situation as I really wanted some pictures of this performer.

I set the thing up on manual figuring I can jack around with aperture and shutter speed and see what happens. I crank the ISO up as high as it will go which I believe was 2 settings above 1600 ISO whatever that is on the D-80 I figured the pictures would be really noisy, if I got anything at all to come out, but that’s what noise reduction software is for, right?

Well low and behold small miracles do happen. I managed to find a sorta sweet spot for that night. Here are two of the results. Not bad I think considering I was clueless about Nikons, had terrible light a slow lens and just made it up as I went, but reaffirms the formula of aperture, speed and ISO, and it doesn’t matter what you shoot with if you just use it right, and follow the fundamentals, you can get half decent results. A little noisy, a little grainy, but very usable to my eye. What do you all think? Will be glad to post more if anyone wants to see a few more.

Nik Define 2.0 for noise reduction, Auto Curves is PS5, and that’s it.