Kids backstage

divamum

Howdy folks - haven't done much shooting appropriate for this forum in a while, but did a shoot for my friends at the concert opera on Thursday - they're doing Boheme, and had a boy choir for Act 2.

Watching their faces as peered through the adult chorus members to see and hear was just priceless. The light was beyond terrible for these (there was a bit of light behind them, but they were effectively in the dark), so I had no choice but to bump the ISO way up and go with the grain...

1


2


3


C&C always welcome! :thumb

Richard

Very nice expressions on all of them. I don't see much of a noise problem in the faces, but the blacks are blotchy, not grainy. Is that a PP artifact or textured fabric? It's a little distracting and I think I would try to fix it.

sara505

Is it me, or are these dark?

Otherwise, very good.

divamum

Thanks - I thought the looks on their faces were just priceless as they heard REAL.LIVE.OPERA.SINGERS - very cute.

As for exposure.... they are indeed low. We were (literally) in the DARK - the miracle to me is that I could grab them at all! These have already been boosted +1.61 of a stop in post, and the settings were 1/160 (the slowest I can really go with the 135L), f2.0 @ISO 3200 on the 7d...

I can try to work them up a little brighter, but I think it goes from "grainy" to "snowed out" - I don't mind grain (and it's not a problem at these web sizes) but I think any bigger and it may prove a problem. Not sure if their parents are likely to buy prints or not, so reckoned I needed to proceed with that possibility in mind. Thoughts?

The blacks don't look blotchy on this (calibrated) monitor, but I suspect I need to look at it elsewhere as well -is it in all the shots or just #2?

Oh and Richy - the 85 1.2 is WAY up my list of "wants" - exactly for these sorts of situations! Sadly, at its insane price, it's going to be trumped by a medium zoom, I suspect (please, please, PLEASE Canon can we have that promised 24-70is soon???). Alternatively, I can keep hoping to win the lottery...

lizzard_nyc

Hi Diva,
I like shot #2--I think it's just hard to get past the dark exposure on the first and last--but I like the look of expectation on the kid in shot #2.

Richard

divamum wrote: »

The blacks don't look blotchy on this (calibrated) monitor, but I suspect I need to look at it elsewhere as well -is it in all the shots or just #2?

All three. It may just be a rendering issue in FireFox/Windows. Looks better in Chrome and opening the saved jpg directly into Photoshop looks fine. But when I copy the image from FF into PS, the blacks show areas that measure 0 adjacent to areas that measure 2 (Lightness channel), which is a noticeable difference.

divamum

Thanx all These were just a few that I pulled from the shoot as teasers because they were so darned cute I'm working on processing/editing this shoot tonight and tomorrow so I'll look at these again and hopefully there may be a few others worth using I have a zillion shots to get through - AARGH that's the bad part about CYA overshooting - it does mean I can guarantee a set no matter what the conditions, but it also means ridiculous numbers of shots to wade through!