C&C (First proper photos, they're bad..)

[Rogan]

Well here' sthe rssults from the first proper live concert shooting i did with my Fuji Finepix S5600

i had all the photos on the faster aperture (F3.6) and at ISO 800 which was required

the shots are very very noisy.

So if you have any ways of making them look better/being able to lower the ISO that would be great

as my plan of upgrading to a dSLR cant happen right now and i'll have to wait till september!

http://flickr.com/photos/25808153@N07/sets/72157605346822355/

Thanks,
Rogan

 

[chrisburke]

why do you want C&C if you've already stated the obvious problems with them???

 

[dEARlEADER]

I'm not a heavy into PP... but people on this forum have suggested software called noise ninja.... you can try that to remove noise after the fact...


The alternative to shooting with higher ISO is shooting with either a faster lens (which is not an option for you), or with more light.... so try to get more light down there next time...

These shots would also look better if you were tighter in on your subjects...

 

[PhotoDonkey]

As you can see, your photos are severely underexposed. Have you tried adjusting the light levels? If you don't have photoshop, you can download Picasa for free (just do a web search for Picasa). It's got a feature called "Add Fill Lighting" which basically adjusts the light levels.

Here's one example:

It's a little grainy, but a definite improvement. Photoshop can do everything that was done here, and probably better with the help of an experienced hand, but I wanted to exhibit what picasa can do, since the average person can't afford photoshop.

 

[Rogan]

thanks i tried neat image and noise ninja it just made the iamges look worse

ill play with the lighting efects now as i do have photoshop

 

[PhotoDonkey]

thanks i tried neat image and noise ninja it just made the iamges look worse

ill play with the lighting efects now as i do have photoshop

Cool. I've been able to salvage alot of otherwise ruined pictures using tools like Photoshop and Picasa. Good luck to you! Granted, you can't fix everything, but you can make lemonade out of lemons.

 

[Rogan]

thanks photoDonkey

what tools in photoshop wud u reccomend?

i have CS3

i also have access to lightroom

 

[PhotoDonkey]

Keep in mind that I'm a relative photoshop n00b, but I've had pretty good luck with the following functions:

Image --> Adjustments --> Levels...
Image --> Adjustments --> Auto Color
Image --> Adjustments --> Auto Contrast

Other people here are much more savvy when it comes to photoshop than I am. But hopefully you can play around with them and get the results you want.

One other tip: I've heard that it's best to save your pictures as TIFF to edit them, since JPEG loses quality each time it's saved, but TIFF doesn't.