A good friend of mine, bless her, is starting up her facepainting business and has been my staunchest supporter for my photos since I started going pro part time.

Anyway, this morning was an activity session she runs once a month. It's in your typical really dark and gloomy "hall at the back of a church" place, lit by some fluorescent tubes, but it's dark, particularly when you're trying to shoot a bunch of 2 - 5 year olds who never stop running

Still, they do tend to sit pretty still for some facepainting so here are a few of the better ones.

The D700 high ISO will never cease to amaze me :eek:

D700 + 70-200 vr @ ISO 4000 :eek:, f/3.5, 135mm, 1/30s

D700 + 70-200vr @ ISO 1600, f/3.2, 135mm, 1/30s

I will tidy up the composition and crop for the prints, I'm just being lazy posting them here

70-200 is really nice. And, I really don't care it's about to be replaced by it's mark2 version.

Only problem I have, I'm now seriously lusting for the 200mm f/2 vr :eek:

A few more...

D700 + 70-200vr @ ISO2200, f/4, 140mm, 1/60s

D700 + 70-200vr @ ISO1800, f/2.5, 105mm, 1/60s

I love this lens

Great pics, Xav! You must have a really steady hand, as mine still shows some blur at anything slower than 1/250th of a second!

Thanks, to be honest, I was cheating a bit for the posed shots - I was bracing myself against a wall so was pretty steady

But shooting 200mm at 1/30s is pretty god when you get it right But my keeper rate still needs working on - only about 1 in 4 for what I would deem of merchandable quality (and that means it would still look fantastic printed at 18x12 ) But there's no substitute for practicing though. Reading up on theory and technique doesn't actually get you there, it's only by doing real shoots and learning what works and doesn't that you get the reallly good consistent results. Loving every minute though, even if I do sometimes pull my hair out!