Hello Shadows.

[vansnxtweek]

I took some pictures at a small local songwriters concert this past weekend and I had a great time doing it! There was actually a newspaper photog. there who was moving all around so I tried to stay out of his way and I also tried not to bother the artists. So in other words...I didn't move around from my seat much.

The main issue I had was the shadows. Two out of the three guys had hats on and it made it near impossible to get a picture without a huge shadow on their face. What could I have done to get around this? I guess moving and using the lights as frontlighting? I also had to crank my ISO to get a decent shutter speed. I was using a setting of 3200 which was higher than I've ever used. I had my aperture set pretty much wide open most of the time to try to get in all the light that I could and I don't think that's the kind of depth of field I really wanted to use in some of the pictures. Aren't we talking like inches in focus? The last thing that I noticed is I know you really want to try to get the microphone out of their mouth. Being I couldn't move much this was difficult but I did what I could!

Anyways..on to the good stuff.
Any help is appreciated.

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[sam_justice]

Number one is nice, bump up the iso a bit more to get a faster shutter speed. You'll get much sharper images. I like the ambient lighting, shame they're wearing hats in the other two which is casting a shadow on the faces. They're framed nicely, although a forum member posted on here before about framing on music events which I always try to do - you'll find the backgrounds at gigs are very busy, so it's best to get shots of the waist above, to cut out the busy background and draw the viewers full attention to your subject. Number 3, nice image of all 3 of them! crop out the desk and once again could use a faster shutter speed to make the image sharper. Good job though! Music events are very hard to shoot!

:EDIT: Sorry only looked, didn't read the beginning about iso 3200, what lens/camera are you using? Might be worth investing in a faster sharper one.

 

[vansnxtweek]

Hey man thanks for the advice. I am using the 550D with the 18-55mm F/3.5 lens. Def. not very fast as far as lenses go for indoor stuff. That was my main issue! I will try to crop a little closer and see what I get. I'm always hesitant about cutting too much out..I never know how much is enough..or too much.

 

[sam_justice]

Hey man thanks for the advice. I am using the 550D with the 18-55mm F/3.5 lens. Def. not very fast as far as lenses go for indoor stuff. That was my main issue! I will try to crop a little closer and see what I get. I'm always hesitant about cutting too much out..I never know how much is enough..or too much.

550D is 18megapixels isn't it? If you're a bit wary about cutting off too much in the frame then the extra pixels will easily allow you to shoot a bigger section then you could crop in post without losing any quality.

 

[vansnxtweek]

Ya man it sure is. I didn't mean about quality but simply just how much is good to cut off for the composition of the pictures. I guess just try to keep out random objects? Thanks for the help..the lone ranger on this one..haha.