NAHS Battle of the Bands 2010

My school's first annual Battle of the Bands was Friday night. I volunteered to take a few photos for them because a lot of the players are friends of mine and I thought it would be fun to test out my new 1D Mark IV.
Here's an Animoto video I put together for them. A band called "Red December" won and their final song was Thriller by Michael Jackson. I intend to get their performance recording soon and add it to the video.


By the way, the 1D Mark IV worked extremely well during this event....everything was shot at at least ISO 3200.

-Alex

New Member of the Family!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce to you the newest member of the J. Alexander Smith Photography family, The Canon EOS 1D Mark IV. 

I finally bought it last week from Adorama Camera in New York. I rarely order from them, but when I do, they are always great to work with. I only chose them because B&H was out of the Mark IV though. :)

Where do I begin? There is so much to say about it. It's so much different than my trusty (and now backup body), 50D. Everything is better.

Let's start with the AF system...

It's amazing. Much, much more accurate than the 50D and it locks focus even in terrible shooting conditions, like outside at 9:30 at night. (Yes, that's without any kind of AF assist lights or anything!)

I won't lie - I could have gotten a shot like this one with the 50D. Not anywhere near as easily and as often as I can with the Mark IV. Remember, this thing shoots 10FPS. Also, with it's 45 AF points and 39 cross-type points, taking the picture above is a walk in the park for the camera. Canon's AI-Servo II algorithm seems to be very fine-tuned and very accurate. 

Like I said....a walk in the park for the Mark IV here too. It just reacts well, even with an almost entirely black moving subject. 

Let's take a quick look at it's ISO performance...

I can't say enough kind things about it, really. I was out late tonight shooting a bit after sunset. ISO 10,000. Yeah, 10,000. Check this one out....

Pretty crazy, huh? What about this one...(Ok, I know it's some pillows sitting on the couch. Stop your complaining!)

Guess what that one was at? 12,800 ISO. Clean!

Alright, Video....

I haven't had much of a chance to test out the video. I shot a test video of my dog barking at another dog across the street...the camera produced wonderful 1080p24 video....my editing skills were, well, not quite up to par. I used Apple's iMovie because it was late and I was in a hurry. I do have Adobe Premier Pro CS4 which I will use in the future. You can see the video here. I'll also be using Vimeo instead of Flickr for video from now on.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to try to create some kind of ~5 minute video with this thing that is actually interesting soon. :)

Other Stuff....

Still can't say enough positive things about this camera. It's just amazing. 

Here's a few more photos for you guys....a few of these have been posted on Flickr yet.

Other Events/News

Some other cool stuff is happening here too! I'll be testing this camera out in the field over the next few weeks. I'm shooting my school's "Battle of the Bands" tomorrow night, hopefully some baseball next week and a wedding on May 15th with Jeff Franks. Then we're leaving for Europe on May 29th for two weeks. 

- I'd like to thanks my good buddy Steve Glass for giving me the book "Light: Science & Magic" for my birthday last month! It's a great book! If you haven't read it, you better get on it. :)

- I'll be on and off over the next three weeks. I'm graduating May 25th but our last "academic" school day is May 14th, so finals and final projects are coming up soon. What fun. None of my teachers will let me use a 1D on the final I don't think. :)

Anyway, if you've read this far, sorry, er, congrats. Thanks for reading!

More later as I begin to really put the 1D through it's paces.

-Alex