Laser Tag

Laser Tag

A few weeks back my son, Evan, turned 9. To celebrate we hosted a group of his friends at the Times Square entertainment complex in . After an hour of bowling they got to play midway games then a session of Laser Tag.

Since my earliest visits to this complex I've been wondering what it would be like to take photos in the black-lit arena. Obviously it's dark inside and a flash would kill the atmosphere. The image above was recorded on a Mark II, with a Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. Set on manual, I used a shutter speed of 1/30 s, an aperture of f4.0 and an ISO of 6400 with white balance set to Auto. In Camera Raw I increased the exposure to 1.25 and tweaked the clarity and vibrance. But perhaps the biggest benefit was the new Noise Reduction algorithm that ships with Camera Raw 6.0 in Adobe .

Next time we go back I plan on taking a Speedlight and some light shaping tools with me to figure out how to illuminate the combatants without destroying the overall atmosphere.