Christmas Pageant - Indoor, Poor Lighting, Did I Do OK?

PhotoXopher

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Nikon D300s, Sigma 18-250 HSM OS (f/3.5-6.3)

Next year I'll have faster glass, but is there anything obvious I could have done better? I'm pretty happy with how most of them turned out, some had motion blur but not much you can do about that from the bleachers.

School gymnasium with only a few of the overhead lights on and some lighting above the kids - just enough so they could easily see the bleachers they were on.

3200 ISO, 250mm, f/6.3, 1/20th

(Cropped)
741624056_snVMC-XL.jpg
 
You're right, it is a little soft due to the slow shutter. For being a crop, I'm a little surprised that the noise isn't worse. My D300 doesn't allow for much cropping at ISO 3200...

Other than that the white balance is off and the composition is more snapshot-ish, but you can't do a whole heck of a lot about the composition from the bleachers.

In terms of how you did, I think you did pretty well given the situation. WB is off as said, it's a little soft, and maybe a wee bit underexposed, but given your scenario, It's WAY better than I'm sure most parents came away with!
 
Thanks Pugs!

I think next year with an f/2.8 lens instead of an f/6.3 lens should really help with the sharpness. I need to work on my white balance skills and get something figured out for this kind of thing, any suggestions or just use live view to get the look right? The lights were really yellow, and so are the walls - so it was a pretty nasty yellow tint cast over the whole place.
 
Well, I shoot in raw and adjust the white balance in post. For the exposure, try using the histogram to help you compensate. Spot metering a face will also help with the exposure. Then again, shooting in raw allows me some latitude to bring the exposure up or down in post.
 
Good point.

Sometimes I shoot in RAW + JPG Normal, RAW goes to the CF card and JPG goes to the SD card. I usually go through the JPG's first and if there's a photo I particularly like I make note of the file name and edit the RAW one to my liking. Otherwise they just get tweaked a little in Picasa and uploaded to SmugMug.

But either way, I'm always shooting in at least RAW format.
 
For the limitations that you had to work with, you did do OK, especially considering 1/20 sec. Having done a lot of this type of photography, I use a 200mm 2.8 prime and sometimes a powerful flash set for telephoto mode as well.

skieur
 
I think I have to agree with most here. You came away with more than what most parents do. The three weak spots are the softness, lighting, and the candidness of the photo's composition. Like Pugs said, it's a little "snapshot-ish". There's not much you can do for the composition, but if you send it through some post processing, you could certainly liven up this photo. If you don't already use a photo editing program, I think it'd be worth looking into. Even if it's just Photoshop Elements. But if you can afford to go for something a little more premium, I'd go with Apple Aperture (Mac), which is what I use, or Adobe Lightroom if you're on a PC.

If you're interested, I represent Panasonic's Living In HD community, and tonight (12/15) we're holding a free photography class on Taking Better Photos With Flash. I think the tips might help for future photos that are lacking in proper lighting. It'll be hosted by professional DPA photography John Bentham. I'd really appreciate it if you could support us (and me) by registering for the class and showing up! Heck, if you can at least register, that'd be great as well.

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/898926434

Thanks,
Amadeo
(On behalf of Panasonic's LivingInHD.com)
 
Not bad, considering! My main gripe would be about the composition, but not sure what you could have done about that. Not the best conditions to shoot in and you did way better than most people would!
 
Thanks for the input everyone, I do appreciate it and try to absorb it all for the next attempts!

I think next time we may try and sit in the middle, that might help with the composition.
 
i agree...damn good for the given conditions...the noise at 3200 is acceptable IMO.
nicely done.
 
Thanks guys, it's nice to know I did alright on this one (again, given the conditions).

I appreciate all the advice, and that's how I may have been able to pull this off - advice from the past here on TPF.

:thumbup:
 

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