Band photos C&C

[fokker]

I took these the other night at a gig I went to. I was using my 5D with the 50mm 1.4 and 70-200 2.8 IS. I debated the necessity and burden factor of lugging the gripped 5D and that big heavy lens plus a speedlite through the crowd, but after seeing how sharp some of the photos turned out it was worth the extra effort.

Here are a few of my favourites from the night. Most were shot at ISO1600 and came out surprisingly good in terms of noise. I even shot a few at 3200 ISO and they are completely usable with a bit of noise reduction. Note pics are hosted on facebook so quality is not optimum. Comments appreciated.

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4.

5.

 

[Hardrock]

Very nice! I dont really have any c&c but pics look great.

 

[StillGotIt]

sharp photos...4 is definately my fav.

 

[RobNZ]

Nice pics fokker, 2 grabs me for some reason, easy to look at, nice colour.

That watermark though, umm no, doesnt work for me sorry.

 

[fokker]

That watermark though, umm no, doesnt work for me sorry.

Hmm interesting. It's the first time I've actually bothered using a watermark as I'm going to try to sell some of the photos to the band and I put the whole set up on facebook so didn't want them getting pinched without me at least getting the credit. I thought it was fairly subtle and non-invasive into the photos? Maybe not.

 

[o hey tyler]

Well, if you're going to have a watermark, it should be readable at a glance. You're doesn't have the right pop to it in the photos. Something like this:

Would work well, or if you were to invert that. Although, this may just be personal taste speaking.

Your photos came out nice, I just picked up a 5D today and I'm excited to do some low light shooting with it since it handles noise like a beast.

PS. Sorry I designed that at like 300 ppi.

 

[RobNZ]

Yeah its something I noticed straight away, the font, the embossing and the size relative to the image.

Mine has evolved to be much smaller, and I take a few seconds to consider placement, opacity and I change the colour (usually white thru dark grey) to suit what its placed over, and never placed over an important part of the image.

I want the watermark visible, but not obvious, easily legible, and hopefully does not negatively effect the image overall.

I just have a PNG file that I copy and paste into a new layer, add an inverted layer and link it to the watermark image only, and play with both opacity sliders until it looks right, takes me anywhere from 10-45 seconds to do.

Control freak and perfectionist shining through right there, lol.

I added a quick one, much smaller, less intrusive but easier to read. Just an example of how I would usually do it.

 

[fokker]

Yeah its something I noticed straight away, the font, the embossing and the size relative to the image.

Mine has evolved to be much smaller, and I take a few seconds to consider placement, opacity and I change the colour (usually white thru dark grey) to suit what its placed over, and never placed over an important part of the image.

I want the watermark visible, but not obvious, easily legible, and hopefully does not negatively effect the image overall.

I just have a PNG file that I copy and paste into a new layer, add an inverted layer and link it to the watermark image only, and play with both opacity sliders until it looks right, takes me anywhere from 10-45 seconds to do.

Control freak and perfectionist shining through right there, lol.

I added a quick one, much smaller, less intrusive but easier to read. Just an example of how I would usually do it.

You're right about placement, but these were all just batch processed - I don't really have the patience to individually do 25 or 50 in photoshop, I just use a lightroom plugin on export which puts the watermark in the same place every time. The watermark was just something I threw together quickly without really putting a lot of thought into it, like I say it's the first time I've done it so it will probably change.
I really like the design tyler did, but I probably won't use it because it would be a bit lame since I didn't design it myself

 

[gsgary]

These came out well but i would ditch the flash for band photography

 

[fokker]

These came out well but i would ditch the flash for band photography

I was really struggling to get anything good without the flash, even when I was using my 50mm 1.4 at ISO3200 I was having trouble...

EDIT: Or were you meaning that the flash would piss off the band members after taking 300 photos of them?

 

[o hey tyler]

Yeah its something I noticed straight away, the font, the embossing and the size relative to the image.

Mine has evolved to be much smaller, and I take a few seconds to consider placement, opacity and I change the colour (usually white thru dark grey) to suit what its placed over, and never placed over an important part of the image.

I want the watermark visible, but not obvious, easily legible, and hopefully does not negatively effect the image overall.

I just have a PNG file that I copy and paste into a new layer, add an inverted layer and link it to the watermark image only, and play with both opacity sliders until it looks right, takes me anywhere from 10-45 seconds to do.

Control freak and perfectionist shining through right there, lol.

I added a quick one, much smaller, less intrusive but easier to read. Just an example of how I would usually do it.

You're right about placement, but these were all just batch processed - I don't really have the patience to individually do 25 or 50 in photoshop, I just use a lightroom plugin on export which puts the watermark in the same place every time. The watermark was just something I threw together quickly without really putting a lot of thought into it, like I say it's the first time I've done it so it will probably change.
I really like the design tyler did, but I probably won't use it because it would be a bit lame since I didn't design it myself

You can use it man! I made it for you. Haha.