My first band shoot - thoughts?

[inTempus]

A friend of my wife has a boyfriend who plays blues in local clubs. He's really good by the way.

He asked if I would come to one of his gigs and shoot some pics for him and at some point work on shooting some cover art for his next album. I agreed.

As the date got near (last Friday) I was nervous because I actually had to send my 5D Mark II in for service (hot pixel in video mode that was driving me nuts). The 5D is due back tomorrow... Monday. So that left me with either the 50D or the 1D to do the shoot with. The choice was obvious, take the 1D... but then I've not really shot much with it at ISO 6400 and 3200.

As it turned out I really needed ISO 6400, the highest the 1D Mark III will go. That really made me uncomfortable since I know pushing a camera to its max ISO setting usually yields less than desirable results. The reason I needed such high ISO was 1) very dark bar with no flash and 2) he moves around A LOT while he performs so I needed to stop motion.

Here's the end result. I think things worked out well, and he loves the pics. Here's a few random shots from the shoot, let me know what you think.

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

[sly677]

Those are really nice looking shots. What kind of lens were you using? The look really sharp and clear, for shot taken at 3200-6400 ISO. I went to a friend's concert this weekend and it was REALLY dark in the bar, at ISO 3200 (Nikon D60, 50mm f1.8) the shots are really noisy. Nice shots!

 

[Jose Cuervo]

great shots. i see no grain at all here despite using ISO6400. if there was grain in the original, what did you do in PP to get rid of it? my shots on my D40 at ISO800 are so grainy that i never go any higher than ISO400.

 

[bdavis]

Nice, i'm impressed by the sharpness and low noise. Great work.

 

[inTempus]

Thanks guys.

The originals are loaded with Chroma noise. I was prepared to Noise Ninja them but discovered that Lightroom 2 does an amazing job removing noise with images from my 1D. It doesn't do a good job with images from my 50D or my 5D Mark II.

This totally put me at ease with my 1D at high ISO when PP'ing images in Lightroom. Honestly, these don't look much better than my 5D Mark II would have done... or so I believe. I'm very happy with the results.

 

[inTempus]

This shot kind of gives you an idea of the lighting I had to work with. the lights weren't very powerful, but the yellow and blue gels really played havoc with the white balance. A nice yellow background with blue skin tones. The venue was dark (lights out) with the exception of the dim stage lights over head.

 

[inTempus]

Those are really nice looking shots. What kind of lens were you using? The look really sharp and clear, for shot taken at 3200-6400 ISO. I went to a friend's concert this weekend and it was REALLY dark in the bar, at ISO 3200 (Nikon D60, 50mm f1.8) the shots are really noisy. Nice shots!

I jumped back and forth between my 24-70 f/2.8 and my 70-200 f/2.8. I kept the aperture at 2.8 the whole time, obviously.

All of the close-ups you see here were shot with the 70-200.

 

[bdavis]

I know how hard this can be, I've done it and I think you've done an amazing job with the white balance giving the crazy ambient lighting. I still can't get over how clean these images are with the ISO at 6400.

 

[GeneralBenson]

Looks like a good job with a tough white balance mix, since he's got that amber light dumping on his shoulder. Why couldn't you use flash? That would have helped a lot, depending on how close you were.

 

[GeneralBenson]

Why to concert venues feel it necessary to have a different color light on each person?

 

[inTempus]

Looks like a good job with a tough white balance mix, since he's got that amber light dumping on his shoulder. Why couldn't you use flash? That would have helped a lot, depending on how close you were.

I was asked not to flash, which I totally understood.

 

[GeneralBenson]

I don't know what it is with people not wanting light blasted in their face.