29th of April 2012 - Christening of Elena
My first christening with my newly acquired Canon EOS 60D. New camera, I had not scouted the church before, no test shots, the main photographer had lights without frequency sync, so everyone with a compact camera could trigger the flashguns! Very kind and aware, the main photographer asked me not to use my flash since I triggered the flashguns. After a while she understood I was not the only one with a camera flash in the church. The only thing I could do for her was to wait every time until she took the shot she wanted, to shoot mine.
My wife was the godmother of the newly-baptized Elena and I offered to take some additional photos of the mystery, so I knew the families and all the important people beforehand. I had not given my camera the time to show me the maximum High ISO (up until 1600) setting I could work with, so I mainly stuck with Manual settings, ISO 100, Shutter 1/200 and f8 with my Cullmann D 4500-C Flash in Auto E-TTL Mode and hoped I could bring the light from the background using Lightroom 4.
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| Cullmann D 4500-C |
The initial shots came out contrasted and overexposed as I viewed them in my camera tilt screen, brightly lit with an almost black background and I was troubled on how much detail I could bring back from the background and highlights, but I kept on shooting. As I was anxious and careful on how to take the proper stand every time, when to shoot and not to become a walking obstacle for the paid pro photographer and cameraman I couldn’t focus on settings changes for creativity and variety on my shots (e.g. Aperture change and ISO boosting with no flash), so I stayed with my predefined settings. I managed to take a couple of High ISO photos with no flash, though and I also managed to salvage a completely dark photo with no flash (as it had not enough time to charge) and settings of f8, 1/200, ISO 100 with no disturbing noise, an exposure boost of around 3 stops!
I was trying to keep confident because my EOS 60D had a 0,7 EV more dynamic range and better noise handling on High ISO comparing to my previous camera, an EOS 450D (meaning that it SHOULD have a better noise handling when boosting exposure around 2 stops). But I was not quite sure to be honest. Another difficult part was the reds and magentas that I knew Canon would have trouble managing. Camera Landscape profile was out of the question as it turned magenta to orange. Camera Faithful profile resulted in washed out reds and magentas but had the most detail of all profiles. Camera Neutral was a far better profile to use, but I skipped it on the grounds of post process uniformity and because I thought that a Standard profile would do the job nicely as it used to. So I used Camera Standard profile for the output. This should be changed in future shots…
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| Digital Photo Professional Camera Faithful Profile |
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| Digital Photo Professional Camera Landscape Profile |
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| Digital Photo Professional Camera Neutral Profile |
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| Digital Photo Professional Camera Portrait Profile |
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| Digital Photo Professional Camera Standard Profile |
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The ceremony
It was a quick ceremony, too quick I might say… The priest was co-operative up to a point, but also has his own way of thinking about the dos and don’ts. The church was a modern city building, relatively small, but with adequate walking space in the center of Petroupolis in Athens. The christening day was a sunny, rather hot day that made shooting and maneuvering difficult in addition with the extra lights in the temple. I thought it was a good time to use warm colors while post processing to see the appeal this might had to the atmosphere of the event. Still waiting for feedback on this, but I liked it nevertheless.
