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I've been to two concerts in Portland so far and the concert photography thing here is nowhere near Vancouver. I've been the only photographer at the shows and these were shows with quality touring bands headlining. Usually in Vancouver there's at least two or three photographers at any given show at any given venue. It's kind of nice in a way that there's no competition but at the same time there's no one to nerd out with over camera gear during set changes.
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Oct 14, 2014 09:22
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:49 |
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Whew. Just finished going through my photos from my Portland trip. Met up with MMD3/Justin which was super cool. Shot five shows in five days, some more seriously than others. Saw everything from a storyteller to a ska punk band, in all sorts of venues tiny and not-so-tiny. The A7S served me well. If you like beer and shows, Portland is the perfect city for you. And thanks to a visit to the Oregon coast, now I can add sand and salt water to the blood, rain, sweat and alcohol that has doused my camera since I bought it.     And if you want to see regular vacation photos, go here: http://www.mikechow.com/Nature-and-Stuff/Portland-Seattle-October-11-18/
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Oct 20, 2014 20:56
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All I ever shoot is small local shows because I just can't commit to shooting for media any more with my work schedule otherwise I'd be totally rippin' poo poo up. If anyone is thinking of getting an A7S for concerts, do so. It is the most incredible thing to go into a venue with crappy lighting and still get usable shutter speeds and decent photos when other photographers are either stressing out or using flashes. Using manual focus lenses has become almost second nature for me now and often I'll find myself wishing my 35mm f/2.8 was manual focus because while it's zippy in good light, it's slow to focus in the dark. You'll pretty much never run out of buffer because the camera was designed to handle much larger 36MP files than the 12MP files it produces. This is at ISO 8000.  This is at 40000. I shot most of the photos in this particular set at 51200. I was shooting at 1/200 and 1/250 in lovely light. Such a huge thing for jumpy, head bangy bands.  The scary thing is that in a few years, with the way technology advances, eventually all new cameras will have at least A7S-type capabilities. It used to be that you'd need a D3 to shoot decently clean 6400 photos or a 1DMkIII to shoot at 3200. Now even the cheapest Rebel or NEX will do that.
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Jan 20, 2015 23:05
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I know most of you are probably sick of how I go on about my A7S, but it truly is a revolutionary creative tool for concert photographers. Get one and you will no longer worry about wild motion or bad lighting. You will go out and take photos fearlessly, capturing exact moments as opposed to moments between moments. I could never go back to my old cameras now. The thought that I used to work primarily at 1600 and 3200 seems laughable.  
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Feb 3, 2015 20:18
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Pukestain Pal posted:Do you work for Sony? I actually used to scoff at Sony stuff because their DSLRs were awful. The NEX 5N impressed me for a small, cheap camera. The A7S is nuts.
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Feb 3, 2015 20:32
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MMD3 posted:I'm waiting to decide between 5DS R and A7? You've got a 5D3, don't you? That's still pretty hot poo poo and one of the better all-around cameras available.
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Feb 3, 2015 21:27
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I, Butthole posted:What's the difference between the A7 and A7s? They're both full frame by the looks, and adaptors with AF seem to run at about $400US which isn't too bad considering prices are only going to rise for me now that the Australian dollar is tanking against the US. The A7S is what you'd come up with if you said: "gently caress everything else, let's make a sensor that's built for high ISO performance." It carries on the tradition of the old original Canon 5D and the Nikon D3 with lower resolution for big photosites to soak up the photons. The A7 has better resolution and phase detect AF on the sensor. It is also a lot cheaper, though the A7S is an all-metal build and has an all-metal lens mount.
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Feb 4, 2015 07:16
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Life's too short to shoot boring shows: 
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Feb 16, 2015 21:56
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Oprah Haza posted:Shot in the darkest venue I've ever been in. Judging by the EXIF info, you'd die if you shot in some of the venues I usually go to. Also, while manual focus lenses can be an impediment in everyday shooting, I have found that they are actually better than AF lenses in low light. Shooting film cameras got me used to manual focus so it's just grip it and rip it when the show starts as opposed to "half press, oh god, half press, come on, half press, poo poo, half press, ah there we go". EVFs are great because you get to use a combination of focus peaking and watching the picture whip into focus like an OVF.
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Feb 20, 2015 22:24
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I usually shoot concerts at -1/3 EV. That way you'll still have information to pull out of oversaturated highlights like with red lighting or LED stage lights. Normally the lights are changing so much that it's not a noticeable difference as far as the photo goes, but you'll have that elbow room to work with if needed. DxO Optics pretty much saved me when venues started switching to LED lights because there's a slider that fixes oversaturation and the chunkiness that comes with it in the highlights.
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Mar 6, 2015 20:25
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Man, video people are the worst.
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Mar 13, 2015 23:38
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Pukestain Pal posted:Embrace the noise. Noise actually gives a sharper image. Denoising just causes lack of sharpness and kind of a muddy photo. DxO is really good at retaining detail, sometimes shockingly good. It's also very good at B&W conversions when you get Filmpack to go with it.
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May 4, 2015 01:15
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Newer sensors have better noise than older ones. The older ones had very patterned noise that really stood out. The noise on newer sensors is more random, so it's more like film grain and not as jarring. At least that's what I've found.
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May 4, 2015 17:29
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If Justin's wondering, I haven't commented on his U2 photos yet because life has been crazy and between work and spending a week on a remote island, I haven't had a chance to see his photos on anything other than my OG iPhone 4, which has a strange way of making awful photos look okay. That and I did type out a long reply to his message and his mailbox was full. However, from what I can see of them, they look great and I wish work had been kind enough to unlock the ball and chain on my leg to allow me to catch up with him much as he did for me when I went to Portland at that Bahamas show. Also, one of the cruel ironies in life is that the better your gear gets as you can afford it, the fewer your opportunities get to actually use it, so learn to make the most of what you already have and run with it, kids.
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Jun 1, 2015 17:52
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I've been having fun shooting with an old Sigma 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. I've found that it's a somewhat subtle fisheye in that it does what fisheye lenses do, but somehow it's more subtle in that unless there's blatant cues like a straight line near the edge of the frame, sometimes it slips right by you that it's a fisheye photo. I find the perspective more pleasing than a rectilinear ultrawide because the barrel distortion is not as jarring as how rectilinear ultrawides stretch the image so much towards the edges of the frame. The Sigma gives lots of room in the center of the lens before it starts distorting wildly at the edges. If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive wide FOV lens, you could do a lot worse. I got a good deal on mine because it was in OM mount, which is kind of an oddball mount in this day and age, but it's what I use with my A7S since I am a fan of old Olympus lenses. I've found that while f/2.8 is doable, f/4 is a good balance between overall sharpness and low light capability. Of course it helps when you're using the A7S and ISO isn't so much of a factor. f/4 and f/5.6 are fun because the lens becomes virtually focus-free so you set it and forget it and you can get all sorts of great on-the-fly shots.  
HPL fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 17:57
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As an aside, I've found that one benefit of switching to mirrorless cameras for concert photography is that you don't have to wildly contort yourself to get shots like you do with a DSLR because your head doesn't have to be attached to the camera. I can go up high, down low, around the side, whatever and still get decent shots. This may not sound important when you're young and spry, but when you get a little older and the knees don't have the stamina that they used to, being able to get low angle shots without crouching down or kneeling is money. Or if I'm at a shooting position where there's a stage monitor in the way, I can reach forward with the camera in one hand and shoot around the monitor as opposed to lunging forward with my entire upper body. Also, as a courtesy note to other photographers, please either get a battery grip or learn to shoot with the camera grip down when shooting vertical. It's very annoying as a concertgoer to have a photographer on your left waving their elbow around in your face. As an added benefit, it'll help protect your ribs if there's a rough mosh pit as opposed to leaving them wide open when you chicken wing your portrait-orientation shots.
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Jul 24, 2015 13:57
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MMD3 posted:That's why I prefer to go to shows where there is no pit Sounds like someone here has never shot a Black Label Society show.
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Aug 13, 2015 03:51
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Not bad. Get the drummer in the lower right corner and then I think you can call it a day. It's neat how you (perhaps unintentionally) got a bunch of elements from both photos to line up.
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Sep 18, 2015 01:34
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If he did it in-camera, he's got horseshoes up his butt.
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Sep 18, 2015 14:33
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If you can take better photos than the paid guy and can make it work at whatever rate they're getting paid at, then unless the paid photographer is either your spouse or best friend, there's no reason to not try throwing your hat in the ring and applying for that position next year. And if the paid guy is a lovely photographer, then you not applying is just enabling more lovely photography in the world. HPL fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 19:55
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One thing I find that helps is to underexpose by 1/3 of a stop. LED stage lights blow out easily because they are strong in narrow bands of lights that they use to make up one colour or another. That particular colour may not be the colour that the camera sensor is designed to pick up well so the camera will overexpose things illuminated in that colour. If you underexpose, you can do a little trickery to recover highlights, but if the photo was properly exposed as the sensor figured it should be, the highlights may be blown out in certain areas. Conventional lighting isn't so bad because it emits light across the whole visible spectrum to one degree or another so the sensor can deal with it. The reason B&W conversions work so well in these cases (at least as far as I can figure) is because once you take the particular blown-out colours out of the equation, you're left with the rest of the image which is fine. I have noticed that newer sensors are better at dealing with LED lighting than older sensors, most likely because it's more of an issue now and the sensor companies have learned to adapt somewhat plus newer sensors have better dynamic range so they can go farther before blowing out than older sensors. Post processing software like Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro are better at handling LED lighting as well. I use DxO which has a colour recovery slider and it works great at bringing colour highlights back to earth. Here's a short and simple video showing the spectrum differences between various light sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoAZ-u6hn6g
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Nov 16, 2015 17:15
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Helen Highwater posted:Thanks for the advice, I'm going to be shooting a dance company this Friday, I was dreading trying to compensate for their lighting. You shot a concert with an 18-200? Wow, that's something you may want to look into changing up. Cranking up the ISO won't do any wonders for your highlight recovery. With an f/2.8 lens, you could dialed it back from 12800 to 3200 and gained a ton of image quality and dynamic range. Like I said, tinker around with the software. A lot of times, the information is there, it just has to be brought out. It's a matter of figuring out the method and making it quickly reproducible. I don't use Lightroom, but maybe another Lightroom user here can jump in. And then sometimes crappy lighting is crappy lighting. Part of learning to expose concert photography well is to take note of how lighting conditions change. If the background is well-lit, you shouldn't have problems with overexposing the subject, but if only the subject is lit and the background is dark, that's a recipe for disaster unless you compensate appropriately. Likewise, if it's all the same colour everywhere, there's only so much you can do to make it look good when everything is a sickly green or red or whatever. Handling colour was definitely a lot easier back when it was all incandescent lighting, but LED stage lighting is the present and future and we have to adapt.
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Nov 17, 2015 03:07
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Golluk posted:
Depends on the lighting. If the lighting is fairly static, manual is fine. Manual exposure with static lighting is especially important in strongly backlit situations where/if you don't want the subjects to always appear as silhouettes. If it's fairly dynamic, you're better off with auto exposure.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:13
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Holy cow, you'd have to be shooting an outdoor concert on a sunny day to run at 1/250 at f/8.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:31
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Just got back from seeing Muse. Holy cow, if you appreciate fancy lighting and epic stage craft, definitely check them out. They're on the second half of their North American tour. Don't bring the camera, just sit back and enjoy. Tons of projection tricks with about 15 projection screens coming down from the ceiling, live motion-tracking effects, 9 or 10 giant inflatable quadcopters with lights all over them, hovering around the stage, the stage itself has dynamic LED lighting built into it and the entire stage rotates. It's not a cheap ticket, but at least you can see where all the money went. Even the bassist had lights in the fretboards of all his basses. One thing that was kind of neat is that I was expecting a relatively sedate performance from the band since they're a three-piece and the singer is usually chained to the mic stand, but they positioned microphone stands all around the stage and the two wings so there was way more movement than there would be otherwise. HPL fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 09:11
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It didn't end well, but then my XA has a crappy rangefinder patch.
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Jan 14, 2016 00:14
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The meter only goes to 800. You could also get the screw-on flash for the XA.
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Jan 15, 2016 03:52
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Most small venues don't give a poo poo. Really, it's more up to the promoter than anything as to who can and can't take photos and most small show promoters would gladly jump at the chance for some free publicity as long you're cool with them reposting a photo on Facebook or whatever. Honestly, security at small venues are more concerned if you're bringing in booze or weapons when they're going around checking bags at the door.
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Jan 16, 2016 06:26
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ExecuDork posted:I dunno about that, but I get an "untrusted connection" when I click on your link. The certificate hasn't been set up properly. Fire your IT guy.
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Mar 2, 2016 21:13
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Haven't posted here in a while. I've been digging the old manual focus Sigma 15mm f/2.8 fisheye that I bought a year or so ago. It's a nice fisheye in that the fisheye effect itself is subtle until the very edges of the frame. I'm finding it a good alternative to your classic rectilinear ultra-wide angle lens in that you still get distortion, but it's not the kind of distortion where things get stretched way out.  
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Mar 24, 2017 02:03
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For small venues, get the widest angle lens you can find. Not only do ultra-wides make group shots and full-body shots possible from close range (which you will need to avoid obstructions), but they also make pictures more dramatic by exaggerating perspective. Also, thank you for not tilting the camera.
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Oct 25, 2017 00:10
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:49 |
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Protip: HP5 and Delta 400 are just as good if not better at 3200 as Delta 3200 is as long as you know how to push process.
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Nov 25, 2017 02:35
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