Also too?

I hope you won't mind using your primo seating to snap a few shots for Terylicious (http://www.terylicious.net/) -- with full credit to you, of course. :)

Any photos I shoot that y'all want, you're more than welcome to them. I take a lot of photos but I'm a relative n00b to the photography world. I "solve" this problem by taking many, many, many photos and varying my settings. I get a lot of trash pics and if I'm lucky a couple turn out okay.

If I capture anything y'all want, I'm very happy for you to have it. You're asking for Terylicious, selmak is asking for Sel's site...I REALLY wish I took photography worthy of this hope. :|

I'm thinking of shooting some in the RAW format this time and seeing if processing it post-event helps.

I "solve" this problem by taking many, many, many photos and varying my settings.

Is there some "other" way to take pictures? ;) The only reason I have maybe half a dozen really fabulous shots of Ms. Teryl is because I've taken several hundred. Fortunately, she's a very tolerant subject.

*bounces some more*

You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to the impending silliness here.

My approach is more scattered than most because I don't have the experience to know how to set up a shot so that there's no more than a 1/xx-th of a second exposure because, say, I have a slight muscle tremor that blurs the pic. :| You're right, though, it's all about taking endless pics and hoping the planets were aligned just so and the pose was interesting and nobody else' flash overexposes your shot, and nobody bumps you, and on and on.

If you haven't been to any of the NJ events before, the lighting more than sucks. Dallas was so well lit that I thought they'd learned their lesson. It was a real pleasure to work with those photos. But NJ the last two years has been dark, dark, dark. It isn't limited to the venue because it was in two different hotels and both times the lighting was beyond bad. Hell, the first year, I had trouble seeing the guests from the 3rd row. I have a new flash just for this con. :| Don't know if that affects your planned equipment, but don't expect the Dallas-level of lights.

Oh, I think I'm starting to get the idea. :) I've been so lukewarm about this con for months and months and months. I even considered skipping it to go to museums instead. I'm thrilled now and can barely wait to find out who our new extra guest is!

Hey, depending on how much you're wanting to experiment -- I am planning to bring my monopod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopod) to this thing. It is nice and compact, but can really help with the blurriness factor. Would be happy to let you borrow it and play around.

I've been vacillating on getting a monopod. My real question is how much do they really stabilize? I got the remote shutter release to eliminate that part of the camera movement but I've hesitated on the monopod because I don't see how that solves the problem of my being not so steady. :|

What brand do you have/recommend? How late can I tell you that I'd like to try yours because I decided against buying my own?

Thank you for your very kind offer! I just might take you up on it if I don't have a chance to get to a camera store or decide I'd rather try before buying.

I think you'd find the stabilization factor pretty impressive... I've only used it at a couple conventions, but I got good shots from far away in crappy light, so it must have been effective. :)

I don't recall the brand off hand (it's at home and I'm at work, and my searches through online vendors are not being terribly helpful), but most such products are pretty inexpensive.

In any case, since I'm driving in, I don't mind tossing it in the backseat at all. Consider it yours to experiment with for the Saturday events if you'd like. :)

Thank you! You won't need it on Saturday? I assume you'll be taking photos?

I wish they'd make a monopod a little like a mic stand -- with a round, weighted base. That would probably do me wonders. Not really portable, which I think it the point of the monopod. :)

I rather suspect my seat will be bad enough that it won't matter if I have the monopod or not. I just wanna see Ms. Thang, anyway.

That design would be cool, but... impractical, I think. Especially for moving targets like hyper actresses who like to bounce around on stage or run around through an audience. :)