Indianapolis XLVI

1.6 seconds, f/10, ISO 200, 12mm using Tokina's 12-24mm f/4

People, it's Super Bowl 46 time in Indianapolis.  You know what that means - photo opportunity! We are talking about tons of people, challenging lighting and LOTS of color and action.  Picture Perfecto. 

I headed down the day before the formal activities started to try to capture some views before the party begins.  The challenge was that although it's winter the weather is more late fall like.  Cold and rainy, and it had been raining most of the day.  It just so happened as soon as I parked it stopped raining.  That gave me an opportunity to walk around and shoot some images around Monument Circle which is in the core of Indianapolis.

This time I wanted to capture LOTS of the image so I brought my Tokina AT-X 107 AF DX Fisheye – 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 and a Tokina AF 12-24mm f/4 AT-X Pro DX.  I am a Nikon guy, and prefer to use Nikkor lenses exclusively.  However, I've found that Tokina lenses are as good as my Nikkor lenses.  The only problem is that I don't shoot wide angle that much so I figured this was going to be fun.

2 seconds, f/7, ISO 200, 11.5mm using Tokina's 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5

It was pretty dark outside, and very overcast, so light reflected off the low lying clouds.  This made for some really cool effects when long exposures was done.  For these shoots I simply used my Manfrotto tripod.  I set my Nikon D300s to the lowest ISO so I could minimize as much noise as possible.  Therefore all shots were set at ISO 200.  I also shot all images at F/7 or smaller.  I wanted to get long DOF & light starbursts. 

There were lots of people downtown, but not enough for me to be a bother while standing on the edge of the road with a tripod.  It was fun and the vibe of the city was growing.  You could tell a BIG party was coming. 

I only shot about 50 images, about 50 % with the fisheye and the rest with the wide angle.  Both lens focus smartly and are tack sharp.   The also focus very well in low light, which tends to be a large percentage of my shots.  Bottomline, great lenses.  When I go back out to shoot the event as a run up to the Super Bowl, I will definitely bring these lenses.

0.4 seconds, f/7.1, ISO 200, 10mm using Tokina's 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5

After action comments:

• On weather like this keep a rag or small towel in your bag.  Even though it was not raining buckets it did start to sprinkle, and I didn't have anything handy to clean off my lens.
• Watch out for blowing out portions of the image.  These were fairly long exposures and there was some pretty bright lights.  I had several images that had significant areas blown out.  Post processing can only correct areas of an image if there are pixels.  Check your histogram.
• If you want starbursts keep your aperture at f/9 or higher
• Take advantage of wet pavement.  Try to capture unusual light patterns or shadows. It's pretty cool.