I came to Ashleigh and Jeremy's wedding at Sixty State Place in Albany as an assistant for a magnets photo booth. I never felt very excited for the booth stuff, but when my friend asked if I'd like to come and hang out together for a wedding party night, I was sold as he knew I would like to be at a wedding no matter how. I can't imagine to leave my portable Leica M8 behind, though I soon realized how busy the booth turned out to be and I had to stay there helping them click the shutter and cleave the magnet pads. However, I was still intrigued to take out my beloved M8 and challenge it at extremely low lighting situation - the reception dance floor. I primarily used my favorite Carl Zeiss ZM 28 f/2.8 to shoot wide angle, but soon realized the f/2.8 can't meet my needs in such low light condition considering the usable ISO of M8 at 640. Yes, it's 640, not 6,400. I shot a few at ISO 1,250 at first, but soon the CCD inside seemed to get overheated, creating way more colorful noises that was beyond your imagination in this age and the fearful banding issues. So all of this means I have to stay at ISO 640. In this case, I took out my new equipped Voigtlander Nokton 50 f/1.1 to give it a test drive. Compared to the legendary Leica Noctilux 50 f/1.0 or the latest 50 f/0.95, Voigtlander Nokton 50 was supposed to be way softer and uglier when shot wide open, and it was claimed to have extreme "focus shift" issue. What surprised me a lot is the copy that I used in this session had none of these "claimed" issues, which can tell really easily from the first few shots of the still subjects, the venue's ceiling structures and its underground bank vault. It was pitch dark there, and as you may notice even I shot at f/1.1 and f/1.4 mostly, I still had to maintain 1/15s or 1/5s and pull out a few details in the post-processing from the shadow part, which created quite a bit of noises. And also to shoot it mostly wide open at 1/45s or less on the dance floor by manual focusing at ambient light is another great challenge. I have to look for the available light to help me focus and capture the moments in an usable shutter speed. Then I basically followed the light against the lamps on the walls, the strong directional light from the friendly videographer, and some accidental flash light from the hired professional wedding photographers.
It was truly an exciting and challengeable experience to maneuver a Leica M8 in a wedding reception and pushed its limit, which certainly helped me grab some new ideas and concepts as well as sharpen my eyes more than ever before with a pro DSLR. I certainly would love to bring my Leica experience to more challengeable photographic situations like this, as I truly believe a good photographer should be able to achieve his/her visions any time in any situation without any limitations.
All selected frames below were captured with Leica M8 + Carl Zeiss ZM 28 f/2.8 and Voigtlander Nokton 50 f/1.1 in ambient light.
