Camera: Canon 1D X
Exposure: 1/50
Aperture: f/1.2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 2,000
Getting colleagues together in any one place, at one time, particularly like folks at the Moran Eye Center is a difficult task to say the least. Fortunately, we had a little celebration of some of their accomplishments a few days ago which was a nice opportunity to get some portraits made of them.
I’ve been experimenting with a Leica lately and have been grooving on the wide open aperture look around f/1.0, but having had the Leica for two days, did not want to experiment with unfamiliar equipment on a rare opportunity when so many of my colleagues were in one place at one time.
The setup was pretty simple, though complicated by the location as very bright afternoon sun coming through huge bank of 60 foot tall windows behind us. Fortunately, a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens is in the gear bag and is one of my favorite lenses. But to duplicate the look and shoot wide open, exposure was blown totally out, even at ISO 100 and I had trouble getting the fill in to balance the exposures in the background while shooting wide open. Solution: A ND filter to cut all the exposure down up front then fill in with some flash. Problem: I ran down to the lab to find that I only had an ND 3.0 on site… Solution: crank up the ISO which on most modern cameras gives shockingly smooth images.
To shoot wide open with the amount of light streaming in from behind and knock down the exposure in the background while balancing exposure up front, I used two Canon Speedlight 600EX-RT strobes on either side and behind me shooting through umbrellas.
The image of Randall J. Olson, Chair of Ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center, University of Utah above is an exemplar of the images to follow.
Robert E. Marc is the Director of Research for the Moran Eye Center, Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and the Calvin and JeNeal Hatch Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology.
Alan S. Crandall is the John A. Moran Presidential Professor and Senior-Vice Chair of Ophthalmology, Director of Glaucoma and Cataract and is the Co-Director of the International Division of the Moran Eye Center.
Wolfgang Baehr is the Ralph and Mary Tuck Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of the Foundation Fighting Blindness Center at the Moran Eye Center.
Kathleen Digre is Professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology as well as Adjunct Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Adjunct Professor of Anesthesia. She is the founder of the neuro-ophthalmology service at the Moran Eye Center and is Director of the Neuro-Ophthalmology Division and the Center of Excellence in Women’s Health.
M.E. Hartnett is a vitreoretinal surgeon and Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy.
Bala Ambati is Professsor of Ophthalmology and Director of Corneal Research at the Moran Eye Center.
Greg Hageman is the John A. Moran Presidential Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Translational Medicine at the Moran Eye Center.
P.S. Becca, thanks for helping me with exposure before everyone showed up.
Fantastic! We all thank you, thank you, thank you Bryan Jones for your terrific photos.
Happy to help out… Part of my service to the Moran. ;)
Quite the setup with the ND and then using “high” ISO. I badly need to upgrade. My 40D allows 3200 ISO (called H), but it’s rather useless with the noise. 1600 ISO works, but really pushing it on the quality. 2000 ISO is on the lower end on your 1D and the only noise I see is the dust on my screen.
Great example of “there’s never a photo of the photographer”, heh.
Thanks Ruben,
I would have preferred to go to a lower ISO, but the only filter I had was an ND 3.0 on hand…
Nice pictures Bryan. Shooting at ISO 2000 with that camera is like shooting at 400 or lower on most entry level DSLR’s like my Nikon D5100. You shouldn’t have any trouble making great enlargements if you want.
I can get some fairly reasonable images up to 6400 but they are not even close to the 1DX at that same ISO for image quality and low noise.