Topic: first time concert shooting advice

[Jimna]

thanks again for the awesome transaction BJ, this thing has brought me lots of joy so far.  the biggest advantage to this hobby over taping is i dont have to have a concert going on to indulge.  its more enjoyable day to day so to say.

my wifes grad pics turned out ok.  i got a little emotional during her hooding and kinda blew the pics then, but everything else is good.  i over exposed the shit out of the stage shots though .  all is well, i captured most of a major milestone with success.  she gave me a thumbs up.

[BJ]

hey..are you shooting raw or only jpeg?

if you have raw files..for the graduation, it looks like the lighting was harsh (gym?)  open the raw files in the digital photo professional, and choose a different light source(there is a dropdown box with things like "tungsten, flourescent, daylight etc"  choose one that corrects the white balance on those shots.  you will be amazed the difference in quality when you do that.  You can also add a little bit of contrast, sharpness, and saturation of the colors (dont over do that one tho as it shows quickly).  Just add a little bit of each of these after you correct the white balance, and export to JPG.  You can also do some Noise reduction if needed, but i think 3rd party programs are a little better.  If you are only shooting jpg's, there is another program in there that can do all of these functions also, but I dont know how well it works, or anything about the functionality, so I really can't help on that one.

few hints on the portrait (from a total newb, but its the first things that jump out at me)
I know the light SUCKED, b/c you were at f2.8 1/100 @ iso 1600 (not NEAR as grainy as I would have expected tho...excellent!)
on portraits, rotate your camera 90* so you dont clip her head.  You also might want her to stand a little further from the wall, and you be as close as possible, it will help blur the background a little and put the emphasis on her.  The capture (expression, happiness) is excellent!
finally, try to pay attention to the light source, if you would have moved yourself to the left a few feet and made her turn, the shadows would be less.  finally, this would have been a PERFECT opp for the 50 1.8 (more light, less Depth of field), I see you shot at full zoom (70mm), I think opening up to 24 and getting closer would be better in that situation (but it may have been crowded, etc) but you did great and captured shots that you can be proud of.
 
sanjay and buff will probably have better hints, as I believe they do some portrait/candid photos of people.  Other than my son, I don't shoot peoples a whole lot (ITS TOO HARD!)

[Jimna]

thanks!  ill try to open the raw files (yes i took both) and see what i can do. 

im very happy with this camera though!  thanks so much.

[Sanjay]

ADVICE

Those are pretty spot on observations, wouldn't have said it any different.  Nice advice, also agree on that 50mm.... that thing is gold. I don't do too much of this stuff, I do unconventional portraits, but def fool with the raw file... If you want me to have a stab at a few email them to me and I'll be happy to give it a try.  It looks like it needs to have the WB adjusted and desaturate a bit.

One trick I use to save shitty portraits is to make them black and whites, it really can get you out of a jam.

[cgrooves]

RE:  Concert Shooting Advice
Do you guys recommend shooting in AWB, or changing the setting to Tungsten (or something else)?


BTW, Nice Shots Jimna!

[Sanjay]

RE:  Concert Shooting Advice
Do you guys recommend shooting in AWB, or changing the setting to Tungsten (or something else)?


BTW, Nice Shots Jimna!

Depending on your camera you can either manually set your white balance or do auto.  The D300 does the white balance pretty spot on, so I leave it at auto and usually only have to rarely tweak it.  If I was to set it as something other than Auto I'd manually set it for the room.  If I needed to change the white balance I ALWAYS do it in post processing.  Doing it there will most always result in a higher quality image, plus if Tungsten or whatever setting isn't what you wanted you won't have to double process and degrade the image.   Basically Auto will prob be fine.  It's your ISO, F stop and Shutter speed which make up 80% of what you need to get right.

[Jimna]

very interesting, im going to give some this a try this weekend.  ive just gone with AWB too so far.

so ive caught on to what my ISO needs to be for low light, but whats more conventional for day to day stuff?  how do i determine what ISO to use when im shooting outside or around the house?  ive spent most my time reading about aperture and SS which seemed like the most important aspects thus far, but not that much has been said about ISO or how to gage it.

read on, i know...

[jdawg]

very interesting, im going to give some this a try this weekend.  ive just gone with AWB too so far.

so ive caught on to what my ISO needs to be for low light, but whats more conventional for day to day stuff?  how do i determine what ISO to use when im shooting outside or around the house?  ive spent most my time reading about aperture and SS which seemed like the most important aspects thus far, but not that much has been said about ISO or how to gage it.

read on, i know...

yep, read on is right 

Here's a nice write-up to check out. I'm sure there's are tons of these out there, just one I had handy.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=414088

Bottom line, everything comes with a price. You want fast shutter speeds with big aperture, chances are you'll need a high ISO value. Shooting outdoors, landscapes, where you want to increase the DOF, (high f-stop number) then you can lower the ISO. 100,200, etc...

so anyway, just keep shooting in different environments, lighting conditions, and experiment.

[cgrooves]

Nice link, jdawg.

ive spent most my time reading about aperture and SS which seemed like the most important aspects thus far, but not that much has been said about ISO or how to gage it.

This past weekend I was taking some shots of kids on a horse that was being led.  I was shooting in manual.  I wanted everything sharp & in focus.  The lens I was using is sharpest in the 5.6-8.0 f stop range, so I initially set it in the middle.  I wanted to freeze action, so I set my ss to around 1/800.  I pressed half-way to see what kind of exposure I was getting in that lighting at those settings, and then adjusted my ISO as needed (I believe it was 400 that I ended up using).  Once I had these 3 variables roughly dialed in, I just made minor f stop & ss adjustments for each shot as needed to get proper exposure.  My problem at this point is being fast enough with the minor f stop & ss adjustments to catch the shot I want and have it properly exposed.  Shooting in manual mode hasn't become second nature to me yet, and I often miss the money shot by thinking too much about my adjustments. 

I'm new to photography as well, but that method has worked well for me and follows the suggestions in jdawg's link.  (i.e. determine what your priorities are first and adjust the 3 variables to get the exposure you need)

[stirinthesauce]

 
sanjay and buff will probably have better hints, as I believe they do some portrait/candid photos of people.  Other than my son, I don't shoot peoples a whole lot (ITS TOO HARD!)

Being paged for advice?   

 

BJ, you gave some good tips.  Best thing about shooting in raw is being able to taylor your color schemes to your particular need.  With jpeg, what you got (as for WB) is what you get.  Raw, just change it.  And most important, practice, practice, practice!

[jdawg]

BJ, you gave some good tips.  Best thing about shooting in raw is being able to taylor your color schemes to your particular need.  With jpeg, what you got (as for WB) is what you get.  Raw, just change it.  And most important, practice, practice, practice!

I change the WB (curves, etc) on JPG's all the time in Photoshop. Works great, imo. I have yet to shoot exclusively in raw. On some occasions I'll shoot RAW+JPG, but not that often. Again, depends on what you're shooting and how much time you want to spend on PP.

[BJ]

One last thing..i CANNOT stress enough the need for a calibrated monitor.  When I made my first suggestions, I was basing it off what I saw on my work monitor (dell 19" LCD)  when i got home, and came back to the thread..the pictures was SOO different, b/c of my monitor calibration.  Check Amazon for a Pantone Huey..i picked up a brand new unit for 50$ 

Nice link, jdawg.

ive spent most my time reading about aperture and SS which seemed like the most important aspects thus far, but not that much has been said about ISO or how to gage it.

This past weekend I was taking some shots of kids on a horse that was being led.  I was shooting in manual.  I wanted everything sharp & in focus.  The lens I was using is sharpest in the 5.6-8.0 f stop range, so I initially set it in the middle.  I wanted to freeze action, so I set my ss to around 1/800.  I pressed half-way to see what kind of exposure I was getting in that lighting at those settings, and then adjusted my ISO as needed (I believe it was 400 that I ended up using).  Once I had these 3 variables roughly dialed in, I just made minor f stop & ss adjustments for each shot as needed to get proper exposure.  My problem at this point is being fast enough with the minor f stop & ss adjustments to catch the shot I want and have it properly exposed.  Shooting in manual mode hasn't become second nature to me yet, and I often miss the money shot by thinking too much about my adjustments. 

I'm new to photography as well, but that method has worked well for me and follows the suggestions in jdawg's link.  (i.e. determine what your priorities are first and adjust the 3 variables to get the exposure you need)

thats the way I do it too..start with the fstop, as it determines your depth of field..then ss, then ISO.  That way you can fine tune as you need with the minor adjustments!

[stirinthesauce]

ahh, monitor calibration.  I second the pantone huey rec.  Made a world of difference to me.

jdawg, your right about jpeg in photoshop.  I'm a bit different in my workflow.  I usually assign my whitebalance and get a "recipe" in canon dpp, do a batch process and convert all my raw's to tiff and then pick the ones I want to tweak in pcs3.  My jpeg conversion is the absolute last thing I do as I want all my processing done on uncompressed files.

[phanophish]

For portrait stuff I always shoot Raw as the WB is too critical.  For concert stuff I usually end up setting for tungsten.  I'll frequently shoot JPEG so I can fit more images on the card as you are always limited time wise and I use the burst capability to fire off several quick frames.  with portrait stuff it tends to be more controlled so I'm more selective.  here's some I took of my niece & nephew last weekend...

[Sanjay]

BJ, you gave some good tips.  Best thing about shooting in raw is being able to taylor your color schemes to your particular need.  With jpeg, what you got (as for WB) is what you get.  Raw, just change it.  And most important, practice, practice, practice!

I change the WB (curves, etc) on JPG's all the time in Photoshop. Works great, imo. I have yet to shoot exclusively in raw. On some occasions I'll shoot RAW+JPG, but not that often. Again, depends on what you're shooting and how much time you want to spend on PP.

With a large enough jpg file it will work great, but with a raw file it will work better.  You get artifacts and quality degredation doing edits in jpg.

For instance, it's akin to converting your .wav file to mp3, boosting the levels, adjusting things and then converting it back to .wav.