Last night was the Christ­mas Party of the place I work, the Hamilton Insti­tute. We all took the train into town, went to the Port­er­house, and pretty much just got p***ed.

As it was a fore­see­able time of hap­pi­ness and mer­ri­ness, I decided to bring my cam­era and snap some shots of the people I work with, but in a more relaxed and cosy set­ting. The prob­lem with most pubs is that although they are beau­ti­fully lit they are usu­ally very dark places, so the only choice was to mount my pre­cious little 50mm ƒ/1.4 prime lens — the clas­sic, stand­ard lens in pretty much any cam­era sys­tem. Mine is over 20 years old! It has two main advant­ages: its focal length is very close to the human eye’s focal length (i.e. the pic­tures look and feel like seen in real­ity), and it is a very “bright” lens mean­ing that it allows more light than usual to enter the cam­era. This allows you, together with a high ISO, to work with the avail­able light, so that no flash has to des­troy the atmo­sphere. Also, at ƒ/1.4 you have a very lim­ited depth of field, which isol­ates your sub­jects from any dis­tract­ing back­ground.

The rest of the of the pho­tos from the even­ing can be seen here.