Concert photos...help! :(

[Pariah]

I'm still unconvinced that your lens was set to 1.8, but the photo doesn't have any EXIF attached to it, so I can't check...

How can I fix that? I'd love to give you all the info you need, haha.

stsinner, thanks.

 

[Harmony]

Okay... Mac or PC? If PC, Vista or XP?

If Vista, go to your 'Pictures' folder and click on the image. Below should come a 'bar' of information. You can read it off there, 'aperture'.

If you're Mac or XP, I can't help. Sorry.

 

[Pariah]

Agh. I have XP.

 

[Harmony]

Hmmm... do you have any photo editing software?

 

[Pariah]

Yep, Photoshop CS3.

 

[Harmony]

File Menu - File>File Info>Advanced>EXIF Properties. If you do a "Save for Web & Devices" photoshop strips the EXIF data so you must do a straight save.

Copied from here.

 

[Pariah]

Harmony, thank you. I took a screen cap of the info...

Thanks again.

 

[Harmony]

I have NO idea how to read that.

Hopefully someone else will chime in , because I'm clueless.

 

[dxqcanada]

I would assume that FNumber = 18/10 ... is equal to 1.8

 

[Harmony]

Which means that our theory of 'not 1.8' is screwed, and it must have been DARK in there.

 

[dxqcanada]

Yup, light levels appear to be very low.

 

[Pariah]

Which means that our theory of 'not 1.8' is screwed, and it must have been DARK in there.

It was extremely dark. Just a few colored lights above the stage...nothing else. So would nothing have helped me in that situation? Unfortunately, I'm told that the other venues, while definitely better, are still quite dark...

 

[dxqcanada]

The only way to get a better shot would have been to drop your shutter speed ... but then you would start getting blurred subjects.

Hopefully the other venue is a lot brighter ... maybe they will have spot lights on the band.

 

[Village Idiot]

Seriously, unless they have really good dedicated lighting, then it's hard. I've shot at f/1.8 with high ISOs, and I use burst mode with shutter speeds at 1/10 or so. You'll be lucky if you get one out of ten. I'll post two shots tomorrow.

One was of David Allan Coe with good lighting, the other is a local band that had ambient bar light.

Also, when shooting at f/1.8, it's so hard to get what you want in focus unless you have a lens with USM or whatever fast focusing motor that the manufacture uses. f/1.8 is such a shallow DOF that you may focus on the face and if they shift a few inches while jamming and you'll have a shoulder in focus and nothing else. Short of using a flash, which sucks for concert photography, you just have to cut your losses and pick a better venue.

Edit: Motivation. If click the photo and go to the Flickr pages, you can view larger versions and see the difference. Both were at ISO 1600, but one had much better lighting letting me get a faster shutter speed and there for better exposure and less noise in properly exposed areas.

David Allan Coe with his lighting

Exif
Camera:Canon EOS 30D
Exposure:0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture:f/2.8
Focal Length:50 mm
ISO Speed:1600


First try at shooting a band playing ever.

Exif
Camera:Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture:f/1.8
Focal Length:50 mm
ISO Speed:1600

 

[kundalini]

Make sure your exposure compensation isn't in the negative. Actually, I would set it to positive a couple of stops anyway in a venue like that. Worth a try.

Unless I just have to get a shot, I don't set ISO above 800 on my D80.

Did you shoot RAW?

There's a lot that is against you here.... black backdrop, black clothing, poor lighting.... Hope the next venue is better to you.