C&C - first gig outing

peckerhead

Howdy all, hoping for a little C&C on my first bunch of live gig photos since acquiring a secondhand Olympus E-510 (as mentioned here). I was shooting with an old Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 (100mm equivalent on a four-thirds body), and glad of it because the lighting was pretty dim and even with the aperture wide open I had to push it up to ISO 1600 to get usable shutter speeds.

I haven't done any PP on them yet, other than to batch process them in Neat Image to reduce the noise and sharpen them very slightly; as you can see, some of them still suffer from a bit of camera/subject movement, and manual focussing was fairly hit-and-miss with such narrow DoF (especially shooting from around the edges of the mosh pit! ). I know a few of them could obviously do with some cropping — mic stands and the like peeping in at the edge of the frame — but I'd be grateful for any other suggestions first...

Sorry for posting so many!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7
Damn drummers, hidden away at the back...

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

And one for luck...
#13

The Snipe

I love 5, 6 & 10!

Promac

#6 and the "one for luck" are probably the best in my opinion. The rest are a bit over exposed when you consider the shutter speed you're forced to use. It would've been better to shoot faster and increase the exposure in post-processing as you would've had sharper images. In this kind of light it's generally advisable to under-expose and correct up later.

peckerhead

Promac wrote: »

It would've been better to shoot faster and increase the exposure in post-processing as you would've had sharper images. In this kind of light it's generally advisable to under-expose and correct up later.

Cheers, I wouldn't have known that. I'm old enough to remember learning the 35mm rule of thumb about it being easier to retrieve the highlights in a slightly over-exposed negative, within limits, than to try and rescue detail from an overly thin one (i.e. under-exposed).

melekalikimaka

awesome stuff, insane good for first timer, I've been doing it for years and would be happy with some of these, very very happy. Maybe play with colour balance to fix up skin tones, ideally off the raws

peckerhead

Why, thank you kindly!

It's not my first time ever, just my first time with a DSLR. Back when I were a lad I used to do a fair bit of 35mm stuff — B/W home darkroom and the whole smelly fingers routine. But then when I got in the family way it mostly turned to snaps of my kids and I went through a few point-and-shoot digicams, then a Fuji S9600 bridge a year or two ago, and now finally a "proper" camera again.

So, a returning hobbyist rather than a complete beginner, I suppose. And I did have a lot of duds, too!

11811

Some nice shots there, 6, 9 and the one for luck would be my favorites! considering all that was against you in terms of lighting and that they're great shots. - Was That was Dolans in Limerick? Dim enough venue with not much in the way of lighting really.

Also, I used to have a 510 myself and found it tricky enough with low light.

peckerhead

Cheers mate. Yup, Dolans it is. Great little venue, but the stage lighting tends to be on the "bordello chic" side...

Promac

peckerhead wrote: »

Cheers, I wouldn't have known that. I'm old enough to remember learning the 35mm rule of thumb about it being easier to retrieve the highlights in a slightly over-exposed negative, within limits, than to try and rescue detail from an overly thin one (i.e. under-exposed).

That threw me as well when I switched to digital SLRs. Just make sure you're always shooting in RAW and you should be grand.