LAS NOCHES DE LAS LUMINARIAS 2016

Las Noches de las Luminarias was a holiday celebration at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden.  It featured after dark entertainment, light displays and eight thousand hand lit luminarias.  

On this particular night shortly before Christmas, I saw the Mariachi Pasion, Jacome Flamenco, Salt River Brass Quintet, and the Desert Bells International.

Once the sun went down, the obvious challenge was photographing in low light.  I opened up the aperture all the way to f/4, using a Canon 5D Mark IV and Canon 24-105mm II lens.

In post processing with Lightroom, and Aurora and Noiseless from MacPhun, some of the shots were simply too grainy.  That happens when shooting at around 25,000 ISO!  I had to shoot without a tripod because most of these kinds of venues do not allow tripods.  That is a good policy in this case as it was nearly pitch black out and the Christmas crowd was fairly large.

Until My Next Adventure, 

See You On Down the Road!

Jim Patterson

Photos from Flickr ... and, here are all the keeper photos!

A Day at the Turf Paradise Races

I’ve photographed at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Arizona many times.  So nothing new there.  What WAS new was my second camera, the Canon G3X.  It is smaller and lighter than my main camera, the Canon 5D Mark IV, and cost a lot less.  My thinking was to take this camera and force myself to use it!  It’s the only way to learn a new piece of technology.

This camera can shoot in raw, which is nice for post processing (I use Lightroom primarily).  One question I wanted answered was can I shoot in burst mode.  The answer is yes you can… I did have to put the elector in the sports mode category to do that and then it only saved in jpg format. 

All-in-all, the camera performed well as a second camera.  It doesn’t make me want to give up my 5D Mark IV, that’s for sure.  But now I know I can carry this little beauty with me if I don’t want to haul the heavier 5D Mark IV and the heavier lenses. 

  

Until My Next Adventure, 

See You On Down the Road!

Jim Patterson

Photos from Flickr ...and, here are all the keeper photos!