Live Gig Shots... The Getaway Plan

FatFrogFotography

I guess these go here...







I would love to get some feedback on these if possible. Lighting as with most small live music venues was pretty terrible.

Spent most of the time shooting with my 50 f/1.4 but managed to get a few with the 17-40 L f/4.

More from this set and two other bands from the night here: http://fatfrogfotography.smugmug.com

Thanks, Chris.

Joe Dukovac

I like them. I find the colour one most attractive to me, but hey, everyone's taste is different. I actually like the lighting, because it kind of gives it a more edgy feel to it. I am definitely going to checkout your other shots. Good job, keep it up!

Joe

divamum

I think you did a good job on these. What settings/gear were you using and what NR did you do? (If you'll see my most recent thread, you'll understand why I'm asking these questions!!)

FatFrogFotography

Hi divamum, thanks for dropping by and having a look at my pics. I read through your thread about the singing performance...sorry to hear you had such a bad situation to deal with. The advice you got was pretty sound but I don't think any gear would have made a difference (aside from lighting gear) to get you through that shoot.

The shots above were taken with an EOS 30d (I'm not sure but that could be what you guys call the XTi?) 8.3mp black metal body... I stripped the EXIF data out of the shots so I'm only going on memory (and the shots were taken a little while ago)... I'm guessing these were shot on the upper side of 1000ISO and most likely 1600ISO. As mentioned, most in the set were taken with the 50 1.4 (@ f2-f2.8) and some were taken with the 17-40L f/4 (@ f/4). Given these focal lengths there is little concern for camera shake as you can keep the shutter speed above 1/30th-1/60th in most cases.

The main concern when shooting this style of gig is capturing the subjects without motion blur! These guys and most of the other bands that I've shot are very high energy (i.e. lots of throwing themselves around the stage). When you can't get shutter speeds to freeze that action (due to low levels of lighting), you have to time shots to coincide with peaks of movement or times of little movement...or go for the arty motion blur look to convey the energy of the performance. I figured you had a singing performance, it wasn't exactly going to be frantic...so shooting with low shutter speeds would be acceptable as long as you could handhold the camera at those speeds.

IS in a lens is useful if you're concerned about handheld shutter speeds. It's not useful when you need shutter speed to freeze motion of the subject...only faster glass/wider apertures help that. Hence why I shoot more of this stuff with my 50/1.4 than with the 17/4.

PP for these shots was done with CS3 and Noise Ninja. The 1600ISO shots are noisy but not to the point that you can't clean them with NN. 3200ISO on the other hand is really bad and often only good for B&W shots.

I now have the 70-200 2.8 IS in my bag and can't wait to get it out at my next gig. I also use LR2.3 almost exclusively for PP and find the noise removal acceptable at this point.

PP with CS3 would allow you to mask the subject and go a little more heavy handed with the noise removal on the bg and do some fine tuning on the subject.

I think if you find yourself in this situation again you need to speak out about the lighting. Given that the lighting gear failed, they probably wouldn't have minded if you suggested removing the dark red gel so that you could get some better shots. Good luck for next time and thanks for dropping by to check out my shots and taking the time to comment/learn.

Hackbone

Considering the lighting you did a great job with exposure. Good stuff.