March for the Alternative Set on Flickr.
The March for the Alternative posed a problem regarding shooting; the ideal kit would have been my two Nikon D50 SLRs with a telephoto and a wideangle, but I was going to be walking all day, on top of which I've had trouble with my back recently, making me wary of lugging heavy kit for so long.
In the end, I settled for taking my Panasonic LX3 compact with a Fuji E900 for backup and telephoto shots. The wide end of the LX3 zoom is FOV 24mm, which pulls out foreground objects and pushes backgrounds into the distance, ideal for shooting in crowds. On top of that I underexposed backgrounds by a stop or so and used a pop of fill-flash to bring the foregrounds back. Early shots were taken with the flash on-camera, later ones I used a Cactus wireless trigger to get the flash off-camera, which looked much more natural.
Using a compact where I could compose using the rear screen worked out really well; in general I was getting closer because I could extend the camera to arm's length while still seeing where I was shooting. I could also shoot from high or low viewpoints much more easily than with an SLR (though I found myself once again wishing the LX3 had a rotating screen like the Canon G series). Depth of field was amazing; at f4 I was getting sharp focus from 3ft to infinity, going up to 1.5ft to infinity at f8. Most of the time I shot in manual focus, focussing hyperfocally using the handy depth-of-field guide in the LX3's focus indicator.
Favourite shot of the day:
The March for the Alternative posed a problem regarding shooting; the ideal kit would have been my two Nikon D50 SLRs with a telephoto and a wideangle, but I was going to be walking all day, on top of which I've had trouble with my back recently, making me wary of lugging heavy kit for so long.
In the end, I settled for taking my Panasonic LX3 compact with a Fuji E900 for backup and telephoto shots. The wide end of the LX3 zoom is FOV 24mm, which pulls out foreground objects and pushes backgrounds into the distance, ideal for shooting in crowds. On top of that I underexposed backgrounds by a stop or so and used a pop of fill-flash to bring the foregrounds back. Early shots were taken with the flash on-camera, later ones I used a Cactus wireless trigger to get the flash off-camera, which looked much more natural.
Using a compact where I could compose using the rear screen worked out really well; in general I was getting closer because I could extend the camera to arm's length while still seeing where I was shooting. I could also shoot from high or low viewpoints much more easily than with an SLR (though I found myself once again wishing the LX3 had a rotating screen like the Canon G series). Depth of field was amazing; at f4 I was getting sharp focus from 3ft to infinity, going up to 1.5ft to infinity at f8. Most of the time I shot in manual focus, focussing hyperfocally using the handy depth-of-field guide in the LX3's focus indicator.
Favourite shot of the day:
