If you are thinking of upgrading to a D700 – or the promised D700s / D700x – and shoot low light, then read on for my first impressions!

This weekend was my first “pro” shoot of a concert with my ass-kicking D700.  I am the official photographer (sounds nice, eh?) for Agrippa93 – a progressive industrial/metal band out of Hartford, CT - featuring the vocal talents of Agrippa and the new addition of guitarist Scott Williams (a legend in his own time).  Their last show (with the old line-up) was over 7 months ago and shot in similar light with my D80 and my 50mm f/1.8 prime - blah.  The light was so horrid that I was forced to try ISO 3200 – but the grain was vomit-inducing-unacceptable.  It resembled the planet Hoth inside the auditorium.  But, clicking back to ISO 1600, the grain was still heavy, but almost useable.  Yeah, almost.  I was forced to push them to B&W and give it a real industrial gritty feel to salvage the shots.  I felt so insignificant shooting with that set up – especially without flash.

So, for this shoot, I was able to finally use some real gear.  My Nikon D700 and aSigma 24-70mm f/2.8.  Merlin’s beard, this is heaven.

First of all, I hate flash in live shows.  Flash is the crutch of a weak camera at a concert.  Studio work, flash away.  So, I started out shooting at ISO 3200 and in AP and set it to f/2.8 – but was getting wildly varying shutter speeds and not the crisp action I wanted.  That could be my inexperience at shooting in low light though – very likely. So, I flipped over to SP and set it to 1/40 of a second.  The lighting wasn’t great, so I set the exposure to +1 EV and presto – I was shooting on cloud nine.

ISO 3200 is such a dream on this camera.  I would assume it is that much more for someone that really knows what they are doing in this situation!  As you can see in the shot above and to the right – virtually grain free.  And even in this low light with zero flash, the musicians are bright and sharp.  The only blurs I was getting the whole night was from the drummers and guitarists hands.

Post Work

I shot about 500 photos on Friday, all in RAW and auto-WB.  So there was virtually no in-camera processing.  I even forgot to turn on noise reduction for high ISO!  I exported all the photos into Photoshop CS4 and did a very light touch to the curves to better define the dark shadows.  I then did a slight high pass (1.2) to bring some of the soft features to a more crisp shot.  That was it.  The color and exposure were left completely alone.  About 1 minute processing time, nuts to bolts.

So if you have any questions on “should I upgrade to a D700 / D700s / D700x for low light shooting” the answer is HELL YES!  No Ton-Tons needed to hide from the horrible snow of the D80 with this beast!