So I was real impressed with the iso performance of the D800 but wanted to test it for a much harder challenge. An old friend had a gig in the valley last night so I took the D800 and Zeiss 50MP for a test. At first I was real disappointed because I should've carried a medium tele lens to get more candid type shots, the crowd was wild and taking shots with a 50mm in the mosh pit seemed less than ideal. The lighting was very very harsh and a lot of the photos was overblown with reds so I had to desaturate it to preserve details and tone map to add a bit of character, I did manage to keep some with normal saturation though. These images are taken in ISO 6400 max because I absolutely hate the colour cast from the HI settings but if I knew that I was gonna end up desaturating the photos I probably wouldn't have mind using it.

When I was at the gig I was real happy with how the D800 performed, the ISO was holding up real well and focus confirmation was great although halfway through things got more hectic and movements became too quick to rely on focus confirmation. By the end of the gig I kept kicking myself for not bringing my 105mm because I could've had so many better shots with it but when I got home and transferred the photos I was pleasantly surprised at how much cropping was possible with the D800. The DR held up real well and with all the resolution, NR didn't make the pics look like oil painting.

Some images have completely overblown sections and this is due to the harsh lighting, I was using -1 or -2 EV metering through the night. I didn't use any flash throughout the night. Anyway here are the pics I hope you guys enjoy them, I know the PP might look overcooked for some people but I like vivid images for these kinda gig photos. BTW: there was not one point through the night that the buffer couldn't keep up with my shooting. I went trigger happy at some point and the camera responded fine even with my slow SD card. My personal fav is 18


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