Shots from "Man of La Mancha" (8 images)

Scott_Quier · April 25, 2007

There is a community theater in a small town (Smithfield, VA) near where I live that puts on three shows each year. The show currently in production is "The Man of La Mancha". The theater and I have reached an arrangement whereby I provide still photography services in exchange for advertising space in their program and a display in the lobby of some of the shots from their Tech Rehearsals (my cards and tri-fold pamphlets are right next to the display :-) )

Anyway, here are a few select shots from last night. These were all shot with Canon 30D, ISO 1600, with the EF-S 17-55 IS or the EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS (shutter between 1/40 and 1/120). Thought you might enjoy and maybe appreciate the high ISO performance of the camera.

BTW - C&C is alway welcome...

1. The leading lady (and a true lady she is)

2. Miquel de Cervantes/Don Quixote and his side-kick

3. Again

4. A scene from the inn (he thinks it's a castle)

5. The confessional

6. Being "knighted" by the inn keeper (lord of the castle)

7. Hmm ... I don't remember what's going on here. The gold bowl is a shaving bowl and DQ thinks it's a golden helmet.

8. Again, not quite sure what this is all about, I was working at the time and didn't have the spare attention to follow the story.

System · April 26, 2007

enjoyed looking at these, scott-

Scott_Quier · April 26, 2007

gefillmore wrote:

enjoyed looking at these, scott-

Thanks!

Ted Szukalski · April 26, 2007

Excellent work.

I'd love to have the local theater and its stage lighting as my studio.

Scott_Quier · April 26, 2007

Ted Szukalski wrote:

Excellent work.

I'd love to have the local theater and its stage lighting as my studio.

Thanks you!

Lots of room, but the lights - I don't know. The color is not consistant from one spot to the next. So, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to shots done on stage.

But, it was fun!

Nikolai · April 26, 2007

Scott,
Nice shootn', I like #3 "Again" the most!

gmonkeh · April 26, 2007

These are excellent shots Shcotty! Did you use any other lighting aside from the stage lights?

Great low light shots.

Lex

urbanaries · April 26, 2007

The second to last is my favorite, could work as a single portrait, too.

Nice work and performance from those IS lenses.....I am happy with my non-canon, non IS equivalents until I see amazingly crisp shots like these! :cry

Scott_Quier · April 26, 2007

gmonkeh wrote:

These are excellent shots Shcotty! Did you use any other lighting aside from the stage lights?

Great low light shots.

Lex

Nope, all with stage lighting and some of it was quite low! Great practice for shoot wedding receptions!

urbanaries wrote:

The second to last is my favorite, could work as a single portrait, too.

Nice work and performance from those IS lenses.....I am happy with my non-canon, non IS equivalents until I see amazingly crisp shots like these! :cry

Some time ago I read a post by Andy - something about buy it once, buy it right. Well, I'm too stooooopppppiiiiiiidddddd to learn from other people, I had to learn it the hard way. But, I did learn it. When I decided to go into business, I researched to determine the best lenses for the job and bought them - then didn't sleep for two nights wondering/worrying if I had just made a gross error in judgement. Now I know, the equipment doesn't make the photograph (I have the huge number of throw-aways to prove that), but they to help to make the photograph possible.

One day, I hope to be able to afford a couple of 5D cameras (or whatever is there in it's stead), but that's down the road a piece.

Swartzy · April 26, 2007

Way to go Scott
Nice shooting. Great exposures too despite the crazy stage (aren't they all?). Some very nice captures here. Most coolness :ivar

saurora · April 26, 2007

Excellent shots Scott! At least the stage lighting wasn't too crazy. (If it was, you did an excellent job hiding it!!!).

gpphotos · April 27, 2007

i love shooting theatre, but the lighting in our theatre here on campus is always oversaturated with yellow or red. it doesnt look right even after the color temp has been tweaked in raw format. i swear they put red gels over every other light in the theatre. ugh.

Scott_Quier · April 27, 2007

Nice shooting. Great exposures too despite the crazy stage (aren't they all?).

Excellent shots Scott! At least the stage lighting wasn't too crazy. (If it was, you did an excellent job hiding it!!!).

i love shooting theatre, but the lighting in our theatre here on campus is always oversaturated with yellow or red. it doesnt look right even after the color temp has been tweaked in raw format. i swear they put red gels over every other light in the theatre. ugh.

Thanks all. The lights were a little crazy from one end of the stage to the other. I had access to the stage before the production started so I took my WhiBal card and took some shots in various locations then used that to set the WB in the photos during PP. Of course, that only worked for about 50% of the shots. The director of light guy liked to change up the color and/or the brightness of the lights all the time so I just did the best I could in PP to get the color right. As you can see, I did better on some than on others.

JimM · April 27, 2007

Some really great shots here! Nice job!

DavidS · April 29, 2007

Great shots.

Mrs F · April 30, 2007

I enjoyed your shots Scott. These are really great. I just ordered my 70-200 f/2.8L IS and the 24-70 f/2.8L last week and they should arrive today. Your shots make me excited to get my lenses. However, I'm not going to get the same performance from my camera at high ISOs with my Rebel XT. Not to mention that I don't have your skill level yet to do my new lenses justice.

Every time someone mentions a WhiBal, I think to myself, "gotta get me one of those..." I ordered all that glass and I still haven't forked over the cash for a Whi...I'm the one that's stuuuupid

Scott_Quier · April 30, 2007

Mrs F wrote:

I enjoyed your shots Scott. These are really great. I just ordered my 70-200 f/2.8L IS and the 24-70 f/2.8L last week and they should arrive today. Your shots make me excited to get my lenses. However, I'm not going to get the same performance from my camera at high ISOs with my Rebel XT. Not to mention that I don't have your skill level yet to do my new lenses justice.

Every time someone mentions a WhiBal, I think to myself, "gotta get me one of those..." I ordered all that glass and I still haven't forked over the cash for a Whi...I'm the one that's stuuuupid

I don't know about the 24-70 (I've never even held one), but I know that you will love the 70-200. That lens is so sweet!

As for the high ISO. Give it a try. I think you may be surprised. The secret is to make sure that you properly expose the image. Get that histogram to the right. It's the dark areas that are going to show the noise the most. Until I shot this show, I was always doing whatever I could to keep the ISO between 100 and 400. No longer. Embrace the high ISO and feel the freedom!

As for skill - that comes with practice, taking lots of exposures and tossing 90% of them before anyone else gets a chance to see just how shoddy a photographer you really are.

It used to be that I felt really good if my keeper rate (not WOW rate, which is much lower) from a shoot was in the 2 - 4% range. Now, after lots of exposures, and analysis of same, the keeper rate is approaching 30%. The WOW rate is still very low. That's the artistic part and the part that I'm finding most difficult. I'm hoping that this part will come with time.

Mrs F · April 30, 2007

Scott_Quier wrote:

As for the high ISO. Give it a try. I think you may be surprised. The secret is to make sure that you properly expose the image. Get that histogram to the right. It's the dark areas that are going to show the noise the most. Until I shot this show, I was always doing whatever I could to keep the ISO between 100 and 400. No longer. Embrace the high ISO and feel the freedom!

Thanks for the "secret" about getting the histogram to the right. Just to clarify, do you put the histogram to the right in all low light situations to decrease the noise, or particularly when you're shooting in "stage lighting" situations. I was always putting the histogram in the middle in the low light situations. That would probably explain my problem with the noise. I want to emrace the high ISO too!

Scott_Quier · April 30, 2007

Mrs F wrote:

Thanks for the "secret" about getting the histogram to the right. Just to clarify, do you put the histogram to the right in all low light situations to decrease the noise, or particularly when you're shooting in "stage lighting" situations. I was always putting the histogram in the middle in the low light situations. That would probably explain my problem with the noise. I want to emrace the high ISO too!

There is a right time to shoot to the right and times when this is inappropriate. Where failure will cost me little or nothing, I shoot to the right, always. But, because one has to be careful not to blow hightlights, I don't push this too much when I'm shooting one-time opportunities (such as weddings). Then, it's "get a good exposure" and let the noise fall where it may. Many clients will not notice a little noise, especially in prints. It's just us pixel peepers (yup, I'm one!) that notice the noise and have to re-align their perspective. Could I have gotten the image at a lower ISO? No, well then we have what we have.

If you are going to do any post-processing, the secret is to keep the histogram as far to the right as you can WITHOUT blowing ANY highlights. OK, right off, that can sometimes be a little difficult. Anyway, doing this gives you as much data as possible to work with during post.

Michael Reichmann has a good discussion of this on his site (here's the link).

Next, shoot RAW. Again, this gives you more data to work with than shooting JPG. There is discussion here all about that and my post in particular (here) that I, naturally, really like:D .

Shooting to the right can/usually leads to slight over-exposure. But, if you didn't blow hightlights, then you still have all your deata and most of it at better bit-depth then if you "correctly" exposed the shot. In PP, you back the exposure down a little bit and you are golden!

All of this is to increase, to whatever extent possible, the signal to noise ratio. The better this ratio, the less you will notice that noise that is there (and, there's always noise - it's the nature of the analog to digital conversion process).

Mrs F · April 30, 2007

Thanks Scott for taking the time to write that explanation. Great info! I've been shooting RAW for about a year (hence my recent purchase of a 2nd hard drive). Your link on RAW vs. JPEG was particularly good.

After skimming the Reichmann site, I realized that I don't know as much about the histogram as I thought. I'm going to do some extensive reading on histograms and dynamic range this afternoon.

Thanks again!

Scott_Quier · April 30, 2007

Mrs F wrote:

Thanks Scott for taking the time to write that explanation. Great info! I've been shooting RAW for about a year (hence my recent purchase of a 2nd hard drive). Your link on RAW vs. JPEG was particularly good.

After skimming the Reichmann site, I realized that I don't know as much about the histogram as I thought. I'm going to do some extensive reading on histograms and dynamic range this afternoon.

Thanks again!

And the next thing you know, you'll start thinking that I know what I'm talking about - talk about making a big mistake....:D

Shots from "Man of La Mancha" (8 images)

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