gig photography

magicbastarder

i was taking shots at a gig on saturday night, and ran into a problem where the lighting for the main act was very saturated - red, green and blue. seems to swamp the sensor; does anyone have any experience of dealing with this sort of issue?
i don't like using flash at gigs, especially as close as i was to the front of the stage.

i'm not very happy with the shots - couldn't get far enough from the stage, or even stray much from one corner.
i had been intending on taking delta 3200, but only had one roll left, so had to take the digital - which is ludicrously grainy at 1600ASA.



http://stroma.org/kevin/maelmordha/

Anouilh

I worked on the photo a bit in Irfanview.

There are too many conflicting strong colours for my taste and using the "neg dif" feature in Harry's Filters softened everything.

Even a simple desaturation helps.

Nice image, btw.

Fajitas!

Well, the lighting certainally wasn't in your favor, but there was a couple of things you could have done at the time - First of all, gotten a bit of a better light reading - Tbh, I'd say that image is overexposed for a gig photograph, you could without a doubt dropped another 2/3 of a stop, maybe more - and afforded a bit lower ISO in the process.

Secondly, white balance - If you've shot in RAW, see what you can bring out of the image through playing with the white balance, you'd never know what you'd get out of it.

Have you sharpened the image at all? The grain is really intrusive tbh.

magicbastarder

playing with the white balance doesn't help an awful lot, unfortunately; there's nothing but reds or blues in a lot of the shots.

no sharpening done; the camera is an olympus E500, and the grain at high ISO is ludicrously bad. plus, the focusing is poor in low light.

one of the main problems was that for a gig that size, there were too many photographers; about six with DSLRs. possibly because there was no limitation on cameras at the gig. but we were all crammed into a space about ten foot by four foot. i gave up after a while, i was far more conscious of having a camera than at gigs when there were only a couple of photographers there, was probably a bit of a distraction for the band.

i'll bring the film next time, more enjoyable to shoot and easier to focus.

AnimalRights

magicbastarder wrote: »

i'll bring the film next time, more enjoyable to shoot and easier to focus.

Only got into Photography less then 2 years ago so I don't get that line...EXPLAIN!

sheesh

magicbastarder wrote: »

playing with the white balance doesn't help an awful lot, unfortunately; there's nothing but reds or blues in a lot of the shots.

Have you tried a black and white conversion

Had an image I took at a gig it was the main singer but there was only a blue light shining on him and It looked kinda crap I de-saturated it and all of a sudden it looked cool! It was a wonderful eureka moment.

ok maybe you just had to be there:o
heres the image

jjoconnor

Shoot RAW - and shoot it black & white. Try using a program like Lightroom and then tweak your settings afterwards - it's shocking what you can do in post now

magicbastarder

AnimalRights wrote: »

Only got into Photography less then 2 years ago so I don't get that line...EXPLAIN!

certainly easier to focus that on my DSLR, which is poor at focusing in low light - i use olympus OM 35mm film cameras, which have the split microprism as a focusing aid. as regards preferring shooting film, well, i suppose it's one of those things which is hard to explain.

i did shoot the above in RAW, haven't really had a chance to play around with B&W conversions yet; i'll have more time at the weekend.

here's some i shot of the same band (mael mordha) when they supported therion in tripod; the first ten shots were on (well expired) delta 3200. the rest on a D40.

http://www.stroma.org/galeria/thumbnails.php?album=30

the film shots are a bit muddy, possibly due to the age of the film, which was several years out of date.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

certainly easier to focus that on my DSLR, which is poor at focusing in low light - i use olympus OM 35mm film cameras, which have the split microprism as a focusing aid. as regards preferring shooting film, well, i suppose it's one of those things which is hard to explain.

I think AR was being a bit facetious, although someone (not AR) -did- post recently saying that while they thought that "film had it's place, concert photography was not it" or something similar, which I declined to comment on because it was a really stupid thing to say ...

magicbastarder wrote: »

here's some i shot of the same band (mael mordha) when they supported therion in tripod; the first ten shots were on (well expired) delta 3200. the rest on a D40.the film shots are a bit muddy, possibly due to the age of the film, which was several years out of date.

They look pretty good though, although yeah delta 3200 isn't normally that bad. Combination of underexposure and out of date film maybe. I'd quite happily use a slow film years out of date, I don't know about a 3200 speed one There's probably things you can do though. I'd up the black point on the scans for a start, and maybe try neatimage to control some of the grain on the highlights.

magicbastarder

i use a trinitron CRT monitor, so my black points seem quite different from people using flatscreens; those shadows in those shots do look very unconvincing on some monitors.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

i use a trinitron CRT monitor,

Best monitors ever I've got a 19" trinitron at home, i've lugged that thing from flat to flat over the years. Sadly I think It's on its last legs, weird flickering red lines occasionally flash across it, and finding someplace to repair it would be impossible nowadays I reckon.

magicbastarder

mine is a 22" that was being thrown out (!) in work.
reduce, reuse, recycle.

well, not so much reduce with that one. it's a bit of a beast.