Gig phoography with EOS 450D and EF 24-85

[iangreenhalgh1]

Not tried to shoot at a live performance in many a long year, but went to a friend's 21st birthday party on Saturday and took a camera, as you do. I used a Cullman flash on low power to do some fill-in as it was really dark. Comments/critiques most welcome as I would like to do more of this sort of shooting and would like to improve my technique.

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[bernhardas]

Edited

[iangreenhalgh1]

Thanks Bernhard. I was conscious of blowing out the mood lighting with the flash so I was trying different flash settings, I think the most effective are those where I had the flash on the lower power settings.

A better camera would help too, the 450d is good for upto ISO 400, higher and the noise is too bad, and it's that blotchy chroma noise that you can't remove. This would be a good application for the new A7 with the 12mp FF sensor.

The stage lighting setup was a big hinderance too, all the lights were behind the ban, there weren't any lights illuminating them from the front apart from some small coloured lights placed on the stage at feet level.

This was one of the very few times when good high ISO performance was something I needed, so it's something I will consider with my next camera purchase. A camera with clean output at 1600 or 3200 would help a lot.

[bernhardas]

Edited

[iangreenhalgh1]

Cheers, some food for though.