Special Christmas Service and High ISO
37/365
Every December my church holds a special pre-Christmas Sunday evening service. That service took place two days ago. We sing many Christmas Carols from the hymnal, there is a lot of other music and Scripture is read chronicling the prophecy of and the birth of Christ. Following the service there is always a food reception, the reputation of which precedes the event and spreads far and wide.
I always go about an hour early. That way I can photograph to my heart's content without interfering with the somber but joyous nature of the event. I refuse to use flash though and because the service takes place at night when there's no ambient light from outside, I have to bump the ISO up pretty high. Even after all these years of using a digital camera and experimenting with high ISO and knowing how good the cameras of today are, I still almost hyperventilate when going past 800 or so.
But I had to go high in spite of my stubborn innate resistance. So I tried 1200--no good. Then 1600--no good. Then 2000--still no good but getting close. Finally up to 2500 and knew I didn't have to go any higher. Whew, I was getting nervous. My camera is excellent at those ISOs, I need to learn to relax and just go with what's necessary to get the images.
It was a great evening and I'm pretty happy with the images. They'll be a nice addition to the church history scrapbooks.
