My first attempt at band photography... Comments and criticism needed!

[cigrainger]

Okay so here are a few shots from my first attempt at band photography. I was shooting Ilford Delta 400 pushed to 1600 with my Pentax ME-F and 50mm f/1.7. I developed this in Ilfotec HC at 21' at around 13.5 mins, with very little agitation. The negs are quite thin, but the CanoScan is doing a pretty decent job, IMO. I went at them with a quite healthy noise reduction in photoshop due to noise from a high backlight correction.

I have quite a few more usable shots on this roll, another roll of black and white, and two rolls of Provia 400x pushed to 1600 that I need to get developed, but I thought I'd get the first impressions.

The band is called Firebrand Super Rock, and they're just friends of a friend. Pretty good Iron Maiden-ish metal/rock band with a very talented female lead singer. I was going for a noir kind of look to match the music. Keep in mind I missed focus a few times because I had to keep at f/1.7 the entire time. It's tough to hit with those guys moving around!

Let me know what you think and how I can improve!

1.

2.

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4.

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7.

8.

 

[cigrainger]

Are they that bad?

 

[Roger]

well they're not particularly good being honest....I don't understand why the negs were so thin at ISO 1600 and a 1.7 lens.... there's really just too little detail for my liking. Despite this I think #1 and #5 are the best, good action.

 

[Mesoam]

shots aren't bad but they are very dark, i can't tell what I'm looking at in most

 

[Chris of Arabia]

The only thing I'd say, is never, ever photograph a band playing a Dean guitar, that is a very slippery slope you're going down....

 

[wdahm519]

Too dark for my liking. Also, not crisp enough at all. Everything seems to blur into one another.

Add sharpness and longer shutter speed. I understand you probably had to set this on 1/60 or faster for handheld shots but get a beanbag or something.

Worst comes to worst, increase your aperture.