Shooting Carnival in Venice <-- please help
Sergio Azenha
Hi,
I will travel to Italy next week and will go to Venice in order to see
(and shoot) the city's famous Carnival.
Can anyone who has done some shooting in the Venice Carnival please
give me some tips?
I read in a photo magazine that Venice will be crawling with
photographers literally fight over the best angles to shoot the
masquerade and so the best lens to use in order to avoid getting other
photographers in the photo would be a 28-80...
Taking into consideration that I own a Nikkor 70-300, a Nikkor 28-80,
a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 and a Voigtländer 19-35, which would be the best
choice for this situation?
The magazine also mentioned that one should use flash to get really
good colors. I would use my Nikon Pronea's built-in flash.
My question regarding the use of flash on this occasion is:
considering that the flash will provide me with enough light, will I
do ok with the less grainy ISO 100 films?
PS - I have both a Nikon F70 (N70 in the US) and an APS reflex Nikon
Pronea 600i (Pronea 6i in the US) but have decided to use the Pronea
because it allows me to easily "mid-roll-change" between different ISO
films as well as B&W and slide film.
regards,
Sergio Azenha
PORTUGAL
Bill Baker
(Sergio Azenha) wrote:
> I read in a photo magazine that Venice will be crawling with
> photographers literally fight over the best angles to shoot the
> masquerade and so the best lens to use in order to avoid getting other
> photographers in the photo would be a 28-80...
Depends on how early you'll be there. Early in Carnival week the
crowds aren't so bad and the people in costume haven't lost patience
yet, so you'll probably be able to get a good, unobstructed position to
shoot a full-length subject with lenses in the 35mm-85mm range. Later
in the week you'll see nothing in your viewfinder but the backs of the
heads of other photogs if you use anything over 50mm. And yes, you'll
have to elbow your way past a billion tourists with P&S's (sez the guy
who only had a P&S when he went to Carnival).
> The magazine also mentioned that one should use flash to get really
> good colors. I would use my Nikon Pronea's built-in flash.
> My question regarding the use of flash on this occasion is:
> considering that the flash will provide me with enough light, will I
> do ok with the less grainy ISO 100 films?
Yeah, I'd concentrate more on film and flash strategy than lenses.
Most of the costumes are brightly colored satins, which render great on
a saturated film but also catch flash highlights like crazy. Plus some
of the best action is at night. The single thing you could do to
improve your shots would be to beg/borrow/steal a Speedlight,
preferably with a frame to get the flash off-axis. Both your cameras
have great flash exposure technology, so use it.
Pretty much any of the big Speedlights should give you enough flash
power to illuminate a group of human-size figures at 8-15 feet ranges
at night. During the day you'll be fine with the built-in flash
shooting 50-200 ASA films (unless you want to go below f8 or so).
_Always_ have a spare set of batteries on hand. The N70 eats batteries
like crazy when using the built-in flash a lot, and I'd imagine the
Pronea is the same.
If it was me I'd shoot Velvia in clear daylight and Provia on cloudy
days and at night (if I had a Speedlight), but that's because I'd want
to shoot mostly slides for the freedom to shoot more without worrying
about processing & printing costs. I'd use Agfa Portrait 160 as my
daylight print film and, again, I'd scrape and scrounge to get a
Speedlight so I'd have the flash to shoot Portrait or another slow
print film at night.
> PS - I have both a Nikon F70 (N70 in the US) and an APS reflex Nikon
> Pronea 600i (Pronea 6i in the US) but have decided to use the Pronea
> because it allows me to easily "mid-roll-change" between different ISO
> films as well as B&W and slide film.
Dump the Pronea. You're probably spending a lot of money on travel and
film, why blow it on shooting a smaller negative? Believe me, unless
the weather is lousy you'll be firing off film at a good clip so you
really won't need to change rolls. Unless you are popping inside and
outside during the day your film needs will be pretty clearly divided
between daylight film (50-100 ASA) and night film (400-800 ASA), so at
most you'll only want to change films once a day. One caveat to this
is that the narrower streets are in shade for most of the day, even on
clear days, and in those spots 50 ASA is really to slow. But most of
the people in costume will be on the plazas, bridges, main streets,
etc., where there's plenty of daylight.
If I were you, I'd sell the Pronea and use the money for an SB-28 and a
ton of film. I'd also want better lenses covering the 35mm-85mm range.
You might think that with the 19mm-35mm, 28mm-80mm, 50mm and 70mm-300mm
you've got all the lens you need in the middle ranges, but you've
really only got one fast, quality lens in that spread, the 50mm prime.
If you want to isolate some harlequin-togged Comedia figure in the
midst of a crowd of tourists, the variable-aperture zooms aren't much
good. You need a lens faster than f2.8 and sharp wide open for shallow
DOF compositions. The Nikon 50mm is super but to get a head-to-heels
view of a human-size subject you'll have to go back so far that another
shooter will probably step in front of you. You'll end up shooting
waist-up shots in order not to be blocked, which would be a shame since
some of the costumes are exquisitely detailed all the way down to the
bells on the shoes. I bet you'll be using that 19-35 zoom wide open at
the top of its range much of the time and wishing you had a 35mm prime
in your bag.
I also really doubt you'll shoot much B&W at Carnival. Then again, if
the crowds start to bug you, you might want to do some architectural
photography in the quieter quarters away from the main plazas.
As a side note, if you want a keepsake from Carnival, shop for Commedia
masks. There is an artisan who makes really lovely molded leather
Commedia masks but I don't have his name or address anymore. And eat
lots of pizza.
Suat Gokmen
Venice. Thanks..
Bill Baker wrote in message <080219991206211618%w...@well.com>...