Gig photography - Need help

ED E

Hi all,

Going to be shooting a load of gig photography next month, and I'm a total greenskin really. Well, not total, but the aul man is the photographer, I'm more on the cinematography side of things. I've shot a few small gigs around town but never really got the results I wanted. Using a Fujifilm FINEPIX-S1000FS-PRO(Very dated, but thats what I got) with the stock 28-400mm 14.3X lens.

Some samples below(band is Coffee[http://www.facebook.com/Coffee.Official.MusicPage]) post PS touch ups. I've done worse, but its still not quite there yet, and its all been playing it by eye. How do you best approach shots where you have a bucketload of stage lighting every which way, and how does one get that HDR look?(Is it all in post?). I follow Deadmau5(dont judge!) on facebook and Rukes' flicks can be really impressive(http://rukes.com/).

I'd really like to get this right, so if any of you have any tips or links to guides that'd be great. I have a lighting rig I can mess with too to try out stuff.

Thanks,
LB.

Jim

You'll probably get more replies posting on the main Photography forum. Here's some threads on gig photography from there. Hope they help.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=70747332
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=72365857
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=72204674
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=70928782

sheesh

loose the flash it kills the atmosphere unless done well proper flash photography is an art in itself.


how high does the iso go to? and how do the pictures look when taken at high iso. take test shots and see what each iso looks like in low light conditions

the bad ones will be all spotty in the dark areas

you will have to use manual settings or at least aperture priority you will want it to be as fast as possible while still getting good quality shots.

ED E

Flash wont be an option most of the time anyways, but yeah, I know what you mean, the lighting should be sufficient on stage to work with it.


10,000 on 3MP, 6400 on 11. Will test later.

@Jim, thanks for the link.

Requesting a move.

sheesh

see even if it dark so long as you can capture some elements sharply or in silhouette you can get good shots. the fact you can go to 6400iso is handy just check the quality at maximum iso so you are sure you can live with the quality

then just keep it sharp by using as high a shutter speed as you can. make sure to get a picture of each member of the band too.

ED E

sheesh wrote: »

then just keep it sharp by using as high a shutter speed as you can. make sure to get a picture of each member of the band too.

Became very aware of this with the above gig. The far guitarist is a nightmare to snap, never looks up, and when he does he has this demonic grin on his face. Next time they're out I'll ask him to spend less time looking at the back wall

ED E

Took some shots in near total darkness just to see. Will get out a par can(light) and try with a little more light tonight.

1/4s and 1600, acceptable.

DSCF5617 by ScratchinTheLens, on Flickr

800

DSCF5618 by ScratchinTheLens, on Flickr

400 is for all intensive purposes, black.

Did 1/400, 1/800, 1/2000 & 1/4000 also. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/scratching/sets/72157626887856311/] Noise is probably gonna limit me to 1600, so from there I'll see how fast I can get the shutter and still get a decent image.

sheesh

1/400 is quiet fast 1/250 should freeze most things

I have a canon 400d and f1.8 50mm and was shooting at 1/20 @ iso 800

this was 1/25 @ iso400 aperture 2.5

Luke by mix_no_1, on Flickr

not a great pic but i thought the guy on the left looked cool

whats your best aperature?

sheesh

Remember Aperture`:
you are shooting at aperture f1/9. The widest on you camera is f1/2.3 (on wide) thats nearly 4 times as much light

smelltheglove

It is nice to be able to shoot a gig with no flash but lets be honest, small gigs are generally in small places and backlit making it near impossibe. I work around this by using flash, bounced on low power, I mean flash of 1/32 / 1/16, like really low, the bare bit of flash will give you enough fill light without killing the atmosphere like a straight on flash would.

ditpaintball

When I was shooting a few gigs before, I always used flash off camera

1 or 2 flashes triggered via remote triggers. I have say a left and a right flash, both on different channels. So when I wanted different parts of the stage lit at different times, I would change channel on the sender.

Having the flash means that you have a better change of getting a sharper shot. But as said before, you need to place the flash it the right place for the right effect. You don't want it to look like you used a flash.

sheesh

oh god if you could get away with using a flash go for it the place i did most of my gig photography was very dark but i would be afraid of annoying the musicians or crowd. As for off camera flash, well would it be there when you got back at the end of your session .

Apart from that flash photography is quiet difficult to get right

ED E

Finally got back to this.

Best aperture is 2.8. Tele limit is 5.3. Also has "Equiv 1.35" on the outside of the lens in two locations, not sure what thats about. When in manual it seems to start at 3.2, but maybe thats just me being an idiot.

I've been looking at getting some slow sync effects, just cause they're the in thing recently(the older generation will probably laugh at this, I realise its nothing new, just its popped back up in club photography of late). Thing is, I can only use SlowSynchro flash in Program AE and Aperture Priority modes, oh and some of the SP2 Presets(Portrait, Portrait Soft, Portrait Enhancer, Night).

These dont allow me to set shutter speed

ED E

First few with room lights on, getting there:


Then I turned off the room lights, flash countered for that automatically, and voila, shots ruined:



The night preset locks all settings out completely.

Gonna see what I can do with other presets. With longer exposures some from the first batch could have worked.

sheesh

is there no manual settings to messaround with? you could probably go darker than the first 2 images there not much darker but you could keep the same aperature and slightly up the shutter speed,