Fire Dancers, Take Two

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how serendipity brought me an opportunity for some rather unusual people photography. Two nights ago, I returned to the same place for the group’s weekly performance.

This time, I came better equipped: instead of using a manual-focus portrait lens in the form of my old 85mm f/1.8 non-AI Nikkor like last time, I reached for my modern Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM lens to pair with my Canon EOS R8.

For a few shots, I tried using shutter priority mode and set my shutter speed to 1/125 sec. But I found that program mode did just fine with deciding what exposure speed and aperture to go for. I shot all of the above images that way.

I was also right to think that my camera’s excellent autofocus subject detection would help me get sharper images. But I was surprised to discover how much labor the lens went through to achieve that focus. The camera body did an excellent job locking onto the faces of my various subjects. But the lens struggled to keep up with those quickly-moving subjects. At times, it hunted around for the best point of focus to the extent that, when it finally settled on a focus point and signaled to the camera body to fire the shutter, the subject had already moved away.

At bottom, my expectations were not particularly high for a lower-priced nifty fifty. It’s served me very well in the time I’ve had it. This specific use case is definitely a more extreme one.

Out of the 1248 exposures I made that evening, I ended up keeping 85. As much as I enjoy working with film, there is definitely a place for digital in my photography practice. Events like this are a prime example.