Girl playing a violin.

[jiro]

This is Kate practicing her violin lessons.


Nikon D70, 50mm lens, ISO 800, f/2.2 @ 1/320 second.

I Got some time to bring the camera with me while waiting for Kate to finish her music lesson at school. I asked the teacher if he would allow me to take some shots of my kid and he gladly said yes.

The music booth is really small. It's about 7 feet wide by 9 feet deep and 8 feet high. To make the situation worse, I brought along a 50mm lens (equivalent to a 75mm lens since the Nikon D70 is a DX camera with a 1.5X crop factor) instead of the other 18-70mm lens. The room was lit by a fluorescent fixture on the ceiling so there is not much dramatic lighting that I was hoping for with available light. I love the personality of the 50mm lens specially at f/2. It gives me that good subject to background separation that I can't get with the 18-70mm due to its smaller aperture limit of f/4.5. Luckily, the small, upright piano inside the music booth has less than 2 feet of space from a wall so I squeezed myself on that space so I can still capture Kate's face and the full length of the violin. That's how tight the space was.

I decided to shoot this one at ISO 800 based on what I've read about some wedding photographers shooting at ISO 800 using only common available light. I knew that my Nikon D70 doesn't perform that good at ISO 800 being "noisy" but I don't mind. What I am after is the feel of the situation and the only way I can do that is to shoot at a higher ISO so I can have some control on the shutter speed. I decided to go with B&W even before I shot this one since the inherent noise grain would look better on the conversion.

Thanks for viewing.

[Donald]

Willie

There's a very black line running up the side of her left hand (on the neck of the violin). It looks like an artifact rather than a shadow. It keeps taking my attention away from the rest of the image.

[jiro]

care to circle it for me? I can't seem to notice it. Thanks.

[Ricco]

I think the black line Donald was talking about is the shadow from her left little finger.

However, I don't think it is a problem at all. I think you have done a great job with the capture. Well done.

[Andrew76]

Nice shot Willie - as per usual....

[jiro]

Thanks a lot, Ricco and Andrew for the warm comments.

[speedneeder]

Hi Jiro,
I like the composition. I can relate to the difficulties of taking photos of kids playing music - I have two kids in band and the only time they play in decent light is at home
I don't see any issues with your ISO 800. I sometimes use ISO 1600 myself, though I find ISO 3200 often disappointing. ISO 800 I use with confidence, though at higher ISO's I do try to compose to avoid as much cropping as possible.
Good photo.

[Donald]

I think the black line Donald was talking about is the shadow from her left little finger.

Yep, that's it. I could understand a shadow getting thrown onto the next of the violin, but not onto the background beyond, as is the case with the lower part of the hand, below her finger.