Lesson Learned: High ISO Sensitivity Matters

This weekend my buddy Brigham, the trombonist for Stymie & the Pimp Jones Love Orchestra, asked me to shoot their gig at Mojito in San Francisco. I jumped at the chance. But with new opportunities came new challenges and new lessons learned. Over the next few days I will post everything I learned from that evening. The first lesson I learned is that having a camera with a very high ISO sensitivity IS important after all! It turns out that flash isn't always the answer. The photo below is very dark and full of noise. It's kind of artistic, but all the details are obscured. Photo info: 52.5mm focal length, 1/40 sec, f/2, ISO 6400, 11:18 pm I had to resort to flash. Photo info: 52.5mm focal length, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, auto flash power with -3 EV flash compensation, 14mm flash zoom through diffuser, flash mounted on camera pointed forward at 60 degrees, 11:25 pm The flash blasted the subjects. The club was poorly lit, which provided a dark atmosphere to enjoy the music. Although my camera-mounted flash was pointed up at a slight forward angle through a diffuser and with a flash compensation value of -3 EV (minimum value allowed), the reflected light still overpowered people. At first I put the flash into manual mode and set it to low power. I liked the subtle effect, but the flash did not have enough power to light the entire person. I also did not have the time to constantly fiddle with the power. Consequently, I had to set my flash to automatically adjust its power in conjunction with the exposure information from the camera. So am I going to rush to the store and replace my camera with a new high ISO one from Canon or Nikon? Heck no! Update: Check out the gig pics on flickr.