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Home » Forums » PhotoShare » Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

photo-a-gig

published by rockstarimages on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 12:09pm

inspired by Kalles Photo a gig series I will pick up his idea.

Instead of wanting to make a fresh photo of every gig I go to my take is going to be a little different.

first off:
If I am able to I want to be able to pull off a flash shot at a gig. thing is it should not be recognizable as a flash shot. Now a lot of you guys are thinking light balance. Well yes, but no. I want to create a light that looks like a stage light but it's really my flash.
Now this can not be done at a whole lot of venues, let alone a whole lot of bands will be happy with that.
For that reason I have a second goal
Second:
I want to get a totally unique shot. something that captures the feeling of a show but that you don't see everyday.
I do want to keep this second goal kinda vague as it keeps my mind a bit more open.
Third:
Combine the two.

I am less interested in technical perfection than the ideas I come up with in this challenge.
I will try to explain every shot in detail.

C&C is more than welcome

Forums: 
Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

Submitted by rockstarimages on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 12:19pm.

here is a first one.

I stood up on the balcony, a d200 on a tripod over the band (the thing gets pretty heavy). an sb800 over on the other end of the room. triggered by on camera flash.
Oh the red dot is from the red light over the camera.

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 8:01am.

rockstarimages wrote:
I want to get a totally unique shot. something that captures the feeling of a show but that you don't see everyday.
I do want to keep this second goal kinda vague as it keeps my mind a bit more open.

This is a very nice goal :)

I'm also intersted in the flash side although I think I personally will just concentrate on honing my availale light skills.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Rene Damkot on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 8:47am.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
I'm also intersted in the flash side

Very short course to getting decent flash images the easy way:

Buy a Nikon. ;D

Submitted by rockstarimages on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 11:49am.

I have a nikon (more than one).

The thing is that although the nikon cls (creative lighting system (thank god for the marketing guys)) is a great tool, it does not do the trick for me. I like to have TOTAL control.

Kalle:
Here is a more detailed description for your falsh skills :-)

So the Nikon SB800 flash is stuck to the railing of the balcony with duct tape (any flash with manual settings will work). Its aimed at the wall over the band. The flash is zoomed out to 24mm. That way you can light a large area, the Band is not in a hotspot and the stage light seconds as a fill.
The flash is also set at 1/32 power. It is controlled by the on camera flash (I can adjust the power output with my d200, love it). The on camera flash does nothing in this pic.

I hear you on the availible light thing. On the other hand I like to have a big bag of tricks, so that I can create any image I see in my head.

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 1:24pm.

I've thought about putting two off-camera flashes to each end of the photo pit (in Lutakko, the small/medium-sized club where I'm the house photographer) when the band is such that the singer tends to come up front and lean over (see the Disco Ensemble pic in my photo-a-gig project) and take a picture then... I don't have the necessary equipment, though (I need the wireless transmitter thingie which canons require).

There'll be a HC/punk gig at a completely new part of Lutakko (it is a sort of cafe for underaged people, some sort of almost public service thingie for kids to hang out, done in co-operation with Youth Against Drugs), I'm guessing the lighting will be bad. I think I'll try out flash there. Probably just direct flash mostly, perhaps shutter draggin, and/or conversion to bw. They'll look like crap but I hope it's the better kind of crap :)

Maybe I'll figure an interesting place to put the second flash unit, though, and try from there.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by Rene Damkot on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 3:17pm.

Kalle Björklid wrote:
I don't have the necessary equipment, though (I need the wireless transmitter thingie which canons require).

You could use your 580 as master.
Problem with any Canon EX flash, is that you are required to use the camera on manual if you set the flash on the camera on manual.
From what I've read somewhere, the ST-E2 can't be used on Manual (flash), only ETTL. But Canon says otherwise. If that's true, that would be a strong argument in fafour of the ST-E2...

Anyone here have one?

Submitted by rockstarimages on Fri, 09/07/2007 - 7:23am.

I would go with pocket wizards. those are dead reliable.
I think the new canon 580ex II has an optical slave. but then again with a mkII or III you can't trigger it huh (nor with a d2xs)?
so your back to pocket wizards.
unfortunatly there is no cheap alternative to those things (around 500 usd). But you can also trigger your camera with them (har har lot of fun).

You might want to get an umbrella on one side of the pit. that way you get a greater aerea lit and more even lighting.

cheers

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Fri, 09/07/2007 - 7:40am.

rockstarimages wrote:
I would go with pocket wizards. those are dead reliable.
I think the new canon 580ex II has an optical slave. but then again with a mkII or III you can't trigger it huh (nor with a d2xs)?

Canon has an optical master thingie referred above (about 200 euros for that), and both my canon flashes work with it.

rockstarimages wrote:
You might want to get an umbrella on one side of the pit. that way you get a greater aerea lit and more even lighting.

Here's a pic of the "pit" I'm talking about:
http://kuvat.huumakuva.net/albums/userpics/10002/_MG_3453.jpg

... maybe a coctail umbrella? ;)

BTW, if this OT discussion (in the sense that these posts are not a part of your photo-a-gig project) bothers you, I can split the topic.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by rockstarimages on Mon, 09/10/2007 - 6:55am.

na it's good to have all the (at least remotely) related discussion right here.

well looks like that place is tiny. but it looks like there is some piping. stick your flash up there and give it a try.

here are two examples of what it looks like to shoot with an umbrella:

Fist one is what it looks like. this was my firts try a couple of monthes back. umbrella on the side set to 1/16th. gel to match the main stage light (bright yellow, yuck)

set up shot:

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by rockstarimages on Sun, 10/28/2007 - 6:08am.

So Posting is back up.
No fancy flash stuff this time. It was a blind shot as I was holding the camera up over the stage. In postprocessing I was going for a more vintage and heavy grain look. The original image was shot at ASA 400 and the grain added was from a tmax 400 scan.
There are two layers with a Highpass Filter (one on 4 and the other on 9.6). two different blend modes. To get a more "unnatural" look there is an other layer with a heavy unsharp mask. Then I added a slight gaussian blur on a seperate laver and masked his face. There are also two correctional layers, one of them saturation the other one curves. All in all it's a 8 layer edit (not counting text layer).
Oh not to forget that I copied out the green channel and pasted it in the blue channel for a more vintage look.
Yep that's it.
Cheers

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by rockstarimages on Mon, 11/12/2007 - 5:59am.

Something different from the traditional pop / rock images we get around here.

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Tue, 11/13/2007 - 10:00am.

That second-to-last photo is really good!

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by rockstarimages on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 5:51am.

thank you kalle.
It was fun to shoot mika. even though I hate the music, the performance was good, the stage was good and the light was not all that bad.
I have been experimenting a lot with flash lately and I might have forgotten a bit what it's like to shoot availible light at a show. But then again I have been at too many shows to just let things slide. If I can take control I will and that has helped me a lot. Especially in all my other work as a Newspaper shooter.
Next week will be crazy with five shows coming up and then the usual 10 to 16 hour days I'm having right now.
I^ll keep you updated on the concert side of my work.
cheers

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by rockstarimages on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 7:17am.

While the big guys where throwing poses she just backed the whole thing up.

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 10:31am.

That's nice when the artist has her own reflector ;). Very nice lighting because of that.

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by rockstarimages on Mon, 02/18/2008 - 12:12pm.

Well welcome to the new forum.
I'm back shooting shows after a two month absence.

Again use of Flash, this time a bit more balanced with the ambient (ok to be honest there was virtually none) and pushed in camera for saturation

Stefan Schaufelberger
Fotografie
Switzerland