Re: Nightclub footage and fast lenses

Justin, many thanks for the very nice comments. Yes, I was shooting wide open with booth lenses; f/1.4 with the 35mm f/1.4L and the f/2 with the 135mm f/2L (which BTW, I absolutely love using the 135mm lens when I can). ISO was maxed out (I think at 3200 ISO, but varied between shots), which at the time was uncontrollable due to the original firmware not allowing manual control of anything (this was back in January of 2009). You had to do a couple of tricks and hit the AE* Lock button to ensure the exposure would hold. It was a huge pain, but luckily Canon released a firmware update for full manual control to resolve all that.

As for output on a large display, it looks excellent in some shots and a bit noisier in others, just depends on the shot and lighting. That being said on a PVM20L5/1 CRT and a 55" LED for reference. The brighter shots, like the DJs on their computers look really nice and pop. But some of the darker shots on the dance floor do present some compression blocking and noise in shadow areas. And of course, every person would have their own opinion, good or bad, of how it looked if they were here seeing it with me in the edit suite. Regardless, I think for what it is, and how little light there was in some of the shots, it really looks good on the 55" LED.

You'll obviously get some stop-loss using the 7D as compared to the 5D2, by how much, I'm not exactly sure. Couple that with an f/2.8 lens and it's starting to get dark. But if you can get that f/1.4 lens, you'll be in better hands.