Bishop Museum Hawaiian Hall - 09/07/09

The Hawaiian Hall reopened last month and we finally got a chance to take a look. I had not realized how dark it was in there due to the sensitive artifacts in the exhibit until I started to take my first shot and it came out really dark. Even w/ the max aperture at F2.8, the shutter speed was reeeally slow! It was a challenge of my skill (or lack of) with my equipment.
The last time I visited was when I was in Elementary school and somehow, I remembered it being larger than it is now except, the whale is still pretty large. Since it seemed hopeless w/ the lighting, I decided to experiment w/ HDR. This is the first and only one I took.
After trying out different ISO and keeping my camera really steady, I was able to take some wide shots of the hall.
The two things I remembered about the hall was the grass hut and the whale. Here are models of the hut.
I'm pretty sure they rebuilt the hut since I know it was larger than this before!
Here's the main reason I wanted to see the hall. I had heard about this feather band w/ real human teeth and I really wanted to take a close look. I tried taking shots using my wide angle lens, but they were all blurry. So I finally used my 50mm @F2.0. It was really hard to get a focused shot.
EV pointed out these masks and I thought it was both kinda spooky looking and yet very interesting.. I really like how the lights shining on it shows off the grooves of the faces.
I was finally done using my wide angle lens and decided to try my 50mm F1.4 lens to see if I can get better shots because of the larger aperture.
I was able to get a few better close ups of the artifacts...and then my battery ran out and I realized I left my backup in my other bag. ARGH!! What a challenging shoot!