After skipping Fanime’s Masquerade last year, I decided to go this year because I knew several of the people doing skits, and because I wanted to exercise my 5D Mark II a bit. Specifically, I wanted to try out three things: my new Sigma 100-300 f/4 lens, the 5DII’s high-ISO capability, and the 5DII’s video recording. Because I arrived about 40 minutes after seating started, I was stuck at the very back of the balcony. On the bright side, this had one advantage: I could stabilize the 100-300 lens on the 4-foot wall behind the last row of seats. This was important because I didn’t have a tripod, I was going to be shooting at or near 300mm the whole time, and that lens doesn’t have IS.

Because of the dark background the camera’s auto-exposure wanted to overexpose everything, so it took a bit of fiddling to find the right camera settings. I ended up photographing everything in ISO 6400, and even then, the shutter speed was somewhat slower than I would have preferred. In the end the images are a bit softer and noisier than I would like, but given I was taking them from so far away, with no flash or tripod, I think they came out reasonably well. Certainly my previous camera, the 40D, wouldn’t have been able to take anywhere near as good photos. Also, I cropped some of them closer, which makes the noise and blur a bit more obvious.

The videos didn’t turn out that bad either. They are a bit shaky because of the lack of a tripod, but the biggest issue is focus. The 5DII’s video mode does not autofocus during recording, and the 100-300′s focus ring was very easy to hit while hand-holding the lens for video recording. I frequently accidentally knocked the lens out of focus and then had to manually refocus. Also, video mode appears to have been hacked into the 5DII at the last minute, making starting and stopping recording harder than it should be, so some of the videos start a bit late. All in all, though, it wasn’t too bad for a first attempt, but I think I can do much better next time.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the Masquerade:

You can see the rest of my Masquerade photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8389387_uTJgd, and you can view my Masquerade videos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8322316_jFAKT.