my first real photography gig

[rdking647]

i was accepted as a volunteer phootgrapher at sxsw. i have to put in 7 days of 8 hour shifts out of the 9 days of the festival. in return they are giving me a $1400 platinum pass to the whole festival. Im really looking forward to it. i packed my bag today since i wasnt sure what to take. right now im bringing in addition to my camera and flash 4 lenses. a 10-24,a 28-300 (my primary lenses) and since i may have to shoot without flash in poor light im bringing a 70-200 f2.8,a 35 f1.8 and a 50 f1.8. Im also bringing a monopod

im going to need a chiro after lugging all this around but i'd rather be safe than sorry at least at teh beginning since ive never done anything like this before.

the rules say I can share any pictures i take on a blog or stuff liek that but they get an exclusive license to them for 6 months

[Mira]

1. I can sense both your excitement

and your apprehension. Congratulations on landing this gig, you'll learn a lot, and that's more valuable than the pass.
What's the festival? Whatever it is being there in an official capacity will allow you to take photos you normally wouldn't of couldn't I bet.
Exciting!

[rdking647]

2. sxsw is an enormous interactive film and music festival

this year the keynote speaker at th emusic part is bruce springsteen(but they wont let us get anywhere near him with a camera). other musicians range from jake shimabukuro to ziggy marley to 50 cent. the film festival has a tone of celebrities at it. the interactive part is where twitter got its start.
they expect 200,000 people or more to come to austin for the festival

[Celebration]

4. awesome

I wasn't quite following when you can share the photos with us, but whenever I would be interested to see.

Congrats!

[Lionessa]

3. Well I have my first video gig in the area I am trying to re-lo to this weekend as well

Mine will be entirely free, so not "real" as you put it, but I'm hoping that since the Ch o' Commerce is sponsoring it and will want some of the free footage for their site etc, it will be a great new connection and synergy.

I'll be video'ing a parade and some contests related to the festival. Only a three day festival. Even so, I'm pumped. I was in Portland, OR area for over 6 months and couldn't get this far with even being allowed to bring my equip into the festival ( I use a mast cam). I've only been in the Phoenix area (this shoot is not in Phoenix proper) a week and a half and viola! A start.

[Solly Mack]

5. !How exciting!

That is just so awesome!

Have a great time! I know you'll get great shots.

[Major Nikon]

6. I've photographed a few different events

I've never done anything exactly like this, but I've covered a few concerts and I've done a few large work related events.

For concerts, the 70-200/2.8 is going to be your best bet unless you can really get in close. You really want to do these without flash, so the monopod will work well here. I would shoot aperture priority f/4, and let your auto iso do it's thing. Assuming you have the Nikon VR version you can let your shutter speed go as low as about 1/60 or 1/125 and still get sharp photos at 200mm.

For people photos, I've found a mid-range zoom works best. I borrowed a buddy's 17-55/2.8 to photograph an event at work and I liked it so well I bought the Tamron 17-50/2.8. The reason I didn't go with the Nikon is because I really only needed the lens occassionally for those types of events and the Tamron was 1/3rd the price of the Nikon lens with comparable quality. Prior to that I used my 50/1.4 a lot, which works well, but it's just not nearly as handy as a mid-range zoom. You might be tempted to use the 35/1.8 or 50/1.8 wide open, but this will give you a lot of out of focus shots. If you have more than one person in the picture, f/1.8 will inevitably cause one person to be in focus and the rest not. f/4 or f/5.6 is what I use most in these situations or even f/8 if you have enough light.

Your 28-300 should work fine during the day, but I wouldn't try to use it at night as the autofocus performance will fall off sharply, especially on the long end. I would use the flash sparingly, but if your autofocus performance starts to become a problem, the focus assist LEDs on the flash will help out to about 30' or so. I never use the focus assist light on the camera. The white light is annoying to people and it isn't that effective anyway. The TTL-BL flash mode works pretty well in these situations, so you can set your auto iso to about 800-3200 depending on how much ambient light you have. The TTL-BL mode will balance the ambient light and your flash. The problem here is matching the color of the ambient light, so you'll probably need a tungsten filter for the flash if you have one.

I don't know that you'll want to take that many wide angle shots, so you may wish to leave the 10-24 behind to save some weight.