Lens recommendations for fashion photography (catwalk)

[wickidwombat]

nice low ceiling to bounce flash, the models look good. should be able to get some decent shots for a portfolio
just make a trip of it with your wife
with all the competition you are going to need the 1D mk2 fast burst rate
get yourself a yongnuo external battery pack to help boost your flash cycle time so it can keep up
do you have 2 flashes you may overheat one and need to swap it over to let it cool down.
go for it

 

[ereka]

nice low ceiling to bounce flash, the models look good. should be able to get some decent shots for a portfolio
just make a trip of it with your wife
with all the competition you are going to need the 1D mk2 fast burst rate
get yourself a yongnuo external battery pack to help boost your flash cycle time so it can keep up
do you have 2 flashes you may overheat one and need to swap it over to let it cool down.
go for it

I'm not sure whether flash will be allowed or advisable - with well over 50 photographers in attendance, would flash not dazzle the other photographers and p*** them off??? I am erring on the side of going though, just for the experience and I'm sure my wife will enjoy the show anyway, so I'll notch up a few brownie points there hopefully

I've already had a go at the back button focussing technique, photographing birds of prey in flight - I should think it's probably a little easier keeping focus on a catwalk model but we'll see!

One thing I haven't tried is zooming whilst in A1 servo mode - how easy or difficult is it to zoom whilst maintaining focus? It seems like yet another skill to practise i.e. holding down the * button to track focus, zooming out at the same time whilst the models walk towards the camera and also controlling the shutter release button for short critically timed bursts - quite a juggling act I suspect!

 

[wickidwombat]

people were definately using flash in that video, hence why i say shoot burst and have a high recycle flash so you will at lease catch a break in the other flashes if your flashes coincide it will blow out the shot. I dont think AI servo will keep lock if you try zoom but using back button focus its easy to reaquire lock after zooming just remember ai servo needs about a second to fix its lock on. with back button focus you just hold that puppy down and shoot so you dont have to worry about balancing the shutter button half way thats why its there as an option

 

[ereka]

Well, I went along in the end and here are the results if anyone is interested:

http://www.derekandersonphotography.co.uk/yeslondon

http://www.derekandersonphotography.co.uk/johnpeter

http://www.derekandersonphotography.co.uk/ff

* 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens on a 1D Mk II

* No flash (but almost everyone else used flash, ruining a good proportion of my shots it has to be said)

* Lighting was mixed and white balance ended up at around 2650 Kelvin (going by grey card)

* I had to shoot on ISO 800 and f/2.8 to achieve shutter speeds between around 1/250th and 1/500th sec

* Back button focus on A1 servo worked really well and the vast majority of the images ended up pretty sharp (I haven't applied any additional sharpening to the images in the galleries on my website, other than the standard capture sharpening when converting from RAW using CS5)

Apart from one photographer who called me a "bl%&^ amateur" and threatened to smash my equipment and throw me out, it was a good experience and I'm glad I went.

Thank you to everyone who offered me advice and the benefit of their experience, all of which helped enormously on the day. Constructive criticism on the results will be very welcome if anyone has the time and inclination. Apologies if this is in the wrong forum.

 

[wickidwombat]

damn someone really said that? what a tool anyway looks like you got some good shots,
backgrounds are a bit distracting, would have been good to blur them even more but as you said you were already at f2.8, Your shooting angle was also quite high, you must be reasonably tall, I would have sat on the floor and shot from a low angle to do two things
1) get less background distraction and
2) make the models look more imposing and dominant
glad the back button worked well with the ai servo it's nice and reliable on the 1D series

I would guess the guys using flash would have more killed shots due to all the other flash and flashes recycling, but i looked pretty well lit and the 1D can handle iso 800 easy.

so would you do it again?

 

[ereka]

damn someone really said that? what a tool anyway looks like you got some good shots,
backgrounds are a bit distracting, would have been good to blur them even more but as you said you were already at f2.8, Your shooting angle was also quite high, you must be reasonably tall, I would have sat on the floor and shot from a low angle to do two things
1) get less background distraction and
2) make the models look more imposing and dominant
glad the back button worked well with the ai servo it's nice and reliable on the 1D series

I would guess the guys using flash would have more killed shots due to all the other flash and flashes recycling, but i looked pretty well lit and the 1D can handle iso 800 easy.

so would you do it again?

Thanks for the critique. It's all new to me, this catwalk photography and it was a good learning experience. I can see that I'm at the bottom of a very steep learning curve! The venue didn't seem great, but it's the only one I've shot at so I can't really compare. I was actually standing on a chair behind around 30 or 40 other photographers for the Yes London and John Peter shows, which was the only way I could get any sort of look in. I didn't want to go anywhere near the aggressive fellow again! He had plonked himself smack bang in the middle of the runway at the front so if I'd sat at the front I'd have been right in his eyeline - goodness knows what stick he'd have given me then! I thought it better to stay well clear and out of eye and earshot! Not only that, but because of the low ceiling I'd have got that in the shots, which would have been an even worse distraction in the images? It wasn't a pretty ceiling - just polystyrene ceiling tiles with a smattering of lights and smoke alarms. I could easily cut the models out and put them on a different background, but that sort of defeats the object of shooting at a live fashion show? ISO 800 isn't great on my camera (don't know if it's typical of the 1D Mk II but it's pretty noisy at ISO 800 and the images I posted have all had quite strong noise reduction applied in a batch via Topaz DeNoise). Looking at the files, I think they'd benefit from some individual attention, but its all very time consuming and I haven't caught up on my last shoot yet! I need a more efficient workflow. Would I do it again? Probably, given the opportunity. I see it as a challenge now!!!

 

[DBCdp]

For what it's worth, I think you did a really good job. You've certainly got some fantastic shots to line your folio with! As for the "tool" I'd like to think I'd have served him nuts to go with his drink but don't know exactly what I'd do in that situation. Looks like you played it about right though as your got good shots and didn't get arrested!

I do think I'd have to deal with him though, in one manner or another. Can't stand folks like that!

 

[ereka]

For what it's worth, I think you did a really good job. You've certainly got some fantastic shots to line your folio with! As for the "tool" I'd like to think I'd have served him nuts to go with his drink but don't know exactly what I'd do in that situation. Looks like you played it about right though as your got good shots and didn't get arrested!

I do think I'd have to deal with him though, in one manner or another. Can't stand folks like that!

Thank you - I just wish they weren't so noisy, the venue had been better and I had a better shooting position (it was as much as I could do do hold the camera steady in the circumstances, let alone frame the shots properly, but I guess it does prove the effectiveness of the IS on the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS MkII as virtually all the shots ended up pretty sharp). I definitely think I'd have been seriously struggling without the IS on that lens!

I've been looking at some of the official London Fashion Week venues appearing on TV news recently with envy. They seem to have taken the photography aspects of the shows into account when designing the catwalks e.g. a large clean plain background in place behind the models when they step onto the runway and good bright even lighting, making it almost like shooting high fashion in a studio.

Regarding the noise in the images, even at 800 ISO, the minimum I could get away with on this occasion, it really is very noticeable on the 1D MkII prior to noise reduction in post production. If it weren't for the "high" ISO noise issue with the camera, I don't think I'd feel such a strong need to replace it, but I look at the (alleged) high ISO performance of newer cameras and can't help wondering how the images would look e.g. from a 5D MkII or 1Dx.

Having said all that, I was sent an image recently, by a London portrait studio, for retouching and I wasn't really that impressed. It wasn't until I looked at the exif data that I realised it was shot on a 5D MkII. It didn't look nearly as good as files from my 1D MkII. Having said that, the shadows were badly clipped, so I guess poor shooting technique probably had a lot to do with it.

Yes, I agree ... I'd have loved to have taken issue with the rude fellow who hassled and threatened me. I held back mainly because I didn't want to become involved in a fight and be thrown out myself, especially after having travelled so far. Also, it wouldn't have been fair on everyone else who'd made the effort to attend or on the organisers and designers who had a vested interest in the success of the show. Another consideration in my mind though was that it was my first time photographing a catwalk show and to be fair, it's quite possible that I was in the wrong. I still don't know exactly what it was because the fellow wouldn't tell me. When I asked him (as politely as I could) he just glared at me like I was an idiot and said I was "messing with his money" and he knew the game I was playing. Well, he knew better than I did and I still don't have the slightest clue what he was on about! I don't think there was any justification for his threatening behaviour though, especially as I was so willing to compromise. I'd have responded much better to a polite "please don't do that (whatever it was) because its ruining my shots". It could have been that I was standing too close and cramping his movement, although all the photographers were really in the same boat so I don't know why he should feel so special and he didn't offer any explanation e.g. "I'm the official photographer and the designers are relying on me". It could have been that I was shooting rapid bursts of around 6 to 12 frames at 9 fps when the models stepped out onto the runway and that was a little loud in his left ear and he found it annoying or distracting, but why not just say so. Most of the advice I received before the shows seemed to point to continous shooting with no flash being the way to go, so that's what I did. Much to my surprise though, most people seemed to be using flash and single shot.

Finally, I've had the opportunity now to look at the websites of a few of the other photographers who attended the shows and on that basis it appears my results are somewhere in the middle - not the best by a long stretch but by no means the worst, so I guess I didn't do too badly for a first attempt

 

[Marsu42]

Apart from one photographer who called me a "bl%&^ amateur" and threatened to smash my equipment and throw me out

Is this behavior customary? Maybe this was just a standard technique for scaring away newbies by letting them wonder what they did wrong, but you actually didn't do anything wrong at all. Please let us know if you ever find out

My first two fashion weeks were shot with a 30D and an old 80-200mm f2.8L lens and it was OK.

You really think using an aps-c body would get one anywhere with *today's* standards?

f5.6 would be good as well, but often due to low lighting I'll sacrifice aperture to make sure I don't have blurry shots from slow shutter speed. Even at f2.8 you can get lots of details in the clothes if you nail the shot and the models aren't too close.

I really would like to know this one: Everybody seems to be using a 2.8 zoom - but if you look at your (lightroom or whatever) stats, at which aperture and zoom range where the pictures shot that got you anywhere at the end of the day? I am wondering if a f4 or even f5.6 zoom or a fixed prime would be ok too for these occasions.

 

[ereka]

I really would like to know this one: Everybody seems to be using a 2.8 zoom - but if you look at your (lightroom or whatever) stats, at which aperture and zoom range where the pictures shot that got you anywhere at the end of the day? I am wondering if a f4 or even f5.6 zoom or a fixed prime would be ok too for these occasions.

I can't comment for anyone else, but for these particular fashion shows I was shooting permanently on f/2.8 at ISO 800 (the highest I can really get away with on the 1DMkII) to maintain fast enough shutter speeds to keep the images sharp.

Three of the resulting pictures have just been published http://www.derekandersonphotography.co.uk/blog which I'm pretty sure wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had f/2.8 available i.e. either I wouldn't have got the shots at all or they just wouldn't have been sharp enough.

Having said that, on a newer body e.g. 5DMkII with better high ISO performance, I guess f/4 or f/5.6 would have been easily achievable. There again, that might have resulted in too much depth of field to separate the models sufficiently from the background?

Regarding zoom versus prime, as I only have one camera body at the moment I'd have been struggling to frame both full length and mid-length shots without a zoom and even if I had two bodies, I suspect it would have taken way too long to put down one body and pick up the other with the rate the models were racing down the catwalk and also impractical due to the sheer number of other photographers crammed into a small area at the end of the runway.

With 'only' 8mp available to me, cropping full length shots to mid-length and resizing them by interpolation might not produce sufficient sharp detail in the clothing? With more mp I guess that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

Flash would be another option, but from my limited experience that isn't ideal when there are so many other photographers shooting at the same time. Actually, there were plenty of photographers using flash and I have to say it ruined a good number of my shots due to gross overexposure.

At the end of the day, you work with the equipment you have with you in the circumstances in which you find yourself (which you can't always predict with absolute certainty). Having f/2.8 available just adds some flexibility in the options available to you, so I'd rather have it than be without it.

 

[Marsu42]

Having said that, on a newer body e.g. 5DMkII with better high ISO performance, I guess f/4 or f/5.6 would have been easily achievable. There again, that might have resulted in too much depth of field to separate the models sufficiently from the background?

Indeed, looking at these shots it's very close quarters and a small dof is called for. The fashion shows I had in mind leave more than 1m between the model and the audience in the background ... and concerning iso noise, this is of course a moving target. Do all shots get automatically rejected when they show the slightest trace of grain?

 

[ereka]

Having said that, on a newer body e.g. 5DMkII with better high ISO performance, I guess f/4 or f/5.6 would have been easily achievable. There again, that might have resulted in too much depth of field to separate the models sufficiently from the background?

Indeed, looking at these shots it's very close quarters and a small dof is called for. The fashion shows I had in mind leave more than 1m between the model and the audience in the background ... and concerning iso noise, this is of course a moving target. Do all shots get automatically rejected when they show the slightest trace of grain?

I think 'slightest trace' is an understatement with the 1DMkII (i.e. without some fairly aggressive noise reduction in post and even then there's the danger of losing detail and making the images too soft; also it takes time). Have you tried using ISO 1600 or 3200 on the 1DMkII? :-\ I find that ISO 800 is manageable but anything more is a bit of a struggle.

 

[Marsu42]

Have you tried using ISO 1600 or 3200 on the 1DMkII? :-\

I haven't come closer to any 1D body than though a shopping windows

But I can tell you something about my 18MP standard aps-c sensor using lightroom and raw: up to iso 400 sharpness is just the same even after a tiny noise reduction, iso 800 is just fine even at 100% but the sharpness/nr tradeoff begins, and iso 1000 is usable if the exposure was right to start with. I also took good pictures with iso 2000, but in this case there really shouldn't be any underexposure to raise in post processing and you cannot crop/print as much as with lower iso levels.

Concerning noise reduction: Using Lightroom 4 instead of 3 takes nr to a new level because a) of of the non-global nr brush and b) the 2012 process is much more clever than the 2003/2010 one because you don't need to raise exposure (= noise) as high as before on underexposed shots but can use the smarter shadow recovery.