I received my 24-70mm lens on Monday and was very eager to use it. I especially wanted to test out it’s maximum aperture of 2.8. Well luckily on Tuesday August 11th, I had the New Name shoot and Water’s Edge at night. A great opportunity to expose my lens to some fresh sunlight and the harsh darkness of 12Stone’s cafe theatre. I thought that the new lens would help with the dark setting, as I’ve had a hard time shooting in there in the past, but it didn’t make too much of difference. I think I’m learning the key thing for catching dark, concert-like settings such as Water’s Edge is max-ISO (which my XTI goes to 1600) combined with a high aperture (2.8 or below) and to not get blur- any shutter speed faster than 1/60. I put those settings together but was still getting a ton of noise and blur with most images. Next solution? A full frame body, but it’s gonna be a long time for that.

Anyways, I gave the night my best shot and these are my favorites. And regardless of camera frustrations I had an awesome time photographing

39 college students giving their life to Christ and being baptized!

I didn’t put those pictures on here, but we’re working to get them to the those that were baptized.