Euphorik

Joe Dukovac

Ok, so I had a young man call me (friend of the family) and ask me if I'd come down to the club that he and his band were going to play. It was a "Battle of the bands" type of thing and they played for only 20 minutes. Anyhow, I took a butt-load of shots since it was my first foray into club shooting. I was using my D300 and my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. I jacked up the ISO to 3200 and ran it through Noise Ninja afterwards to reduce the noise.

Now, personally I think they suck, suck, s-u-c-k suck. But, he got the shot and loved them. I need some major help and advice here guys.

The hardest part of shooting this was them jumping around on stage like rage filled monkeys. I didn't find that the images were sharp enough. I was hard at times to focus quickly also.

Any advice/help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe

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Anyhow, thanks for any C&C!

Joe

D'Buggs

To be blunt......














These are AWESOME!
except for #9 (Ijust don't dig it).

jdorseydesign

Were you actually at f/2.8 on these? I figure in those lighting conditions you need the lens wide open. I tried to do this with my D40x and my 55-200 VR at ISO 1600 and had horrible results. I was hoping the combo of the D300's low light performance and the f2.8 lens would produce better results

Did you have the VR turned on or off? Remember, the VR won't help with the subjects moving.

BTW, I ended up using a monopod when I tried this and it seemed to help a bit.

The_Fat_Zebra

I think you did a good job, but I do feel your pain! I'm regularly shooting in relatively small venues for beginning musicians. (That's as euphimistic as I could express it )
In fact - I'll be in a similar position this evening. Since I've been to the place once before, I will try installing an off-camera flash somewhere high up outside the reach of greedy hands. Maybe that would work for you as well? (Usually the sound technician/DJ booth is a good place for that, they keep people away from their own gear as well ) My pictures of the last shoot I had at that particular venue were similarly for a start-up band and too blurry for my taste. (drummer especially and when they started doing impromptu street dancing on the floor, available light was definitely not an option!) Smart processing makes them look 'artsy', but it shouldn't have to be that way. Now, I'm hoping that a bit of flash light will enable me to get higher shutter speeds, although I'm torn how to gel it. I think I'll just go for tungsten, since there will be all kinds of moving lights all over the place anyway. Well - sorry, didn't mean to hijack your thread. Just my own thinking in a similar situation...