My First ‘Real’ Shoot with the Nikon D4: The Tavistock Pro Golf Tournament
OK, well…technically it was my second. I did a car detail shoot (based on Tim Wallace’s online class) right before I left for Photoshop World, and I posted those shots over on Google+ (here’s the link), but since it was just me in my garage (well, and Brad)…it didn’t feel very “official.”
These are from the Tavistock Golf Tournament in Orlando, Florida which I shot with my buddy Mike Olivella (who is an absolutely ace golf photographer).
I shot two lenses primarily: a 300mm f/2.8 (sometimes with a 1.4 tele-extender on it to get in tighter), and a 14-24mm f/2.8 on my 2nd body, which was a Nikon D3s (that’s one of those wide shots above).
I took a handful of 10.5mm fisheye shots on the 18th tee as the last flight (Tiger’s group) was headed in toward the club house to finish the match, but that’s about it.
I shot in Aperture Priority mode all day, but the sun was in/out of the clouds, so I bounced between 100 and 200 ISO a few times during the day. Even at that, I had shutter speeds up around 1/6400 of a second, so freezing the turf Tiger was digging up was not a problem.
The post-processing was all done in the new Lightroom 4 (no plug-ins or other stuff). It’s pretty amazing how much you can do in LR4 these days.
Here’s another wide angle shot on the 18th green, with some Clarity applied and I desaturated the sky a bit for a bleach bypass look.
As for the D4 — I love it!!!!
The exposure acts a little differently than my D3s, and that took a little getting used to, but I love the overall smoothness and quality of the gradations in tone and color. Plus, it’s just fast as anything, cranking off Raw shots at JPEG speed (and the buffer must be insane, because I never got near filling it).
I also uncovered lots of other little tweaks and improvements to the camera that I hadn’t heard much about in the press, which was a nice surprise. Since these were taken, I also shot at the Sun n’ Fun fly-in, and shot my first D4 Hockey Game, and it performed like a champ. I know this isn’t a full review — just my first impressions, but so far I’m totally digging it. :)
A big thanks to my buddy Mike Olivella for putting up with me (and Braddo) for the day. The weather was perfect (lunch was yummy), and I got to tease Mike endlessly about his totally old-fashioned D3. ;-)