First concert shots - and I think I nailed it somewhat :)

[dbmk]

Every Friday over the summer there is a concert in Tivoli, Copenhagen. This friday it was double act with (and you probably won't know these names :) ) Kira and the Ghostriders and my favourite, Jens Unmack.

And I caught my favourite shot to date:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenrk/3497776469/sizes/l/in/set-72157617587375744/


More from that evening:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenrk/sets/72157617587375744/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenrk/sets/72157617481762109/

Heres what Kira sounds like, if you are interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY2uRmeswY&feature=related

[NV Whino]

1. Nice shot!

[dbmk]

2. Thank you!

[Stevenmarc]

3. No somewhat about it, you nailed it.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

4. seconded

absolutely nailed it

[Tallison]

5. Wow - has she seen it yet?

That's friggin' amazing. All ambient light? Do you remember what f-stop/shutter you used?

[dbmk]

8. Easy to remember. Pushed it to the limit. :)

I set it to shutter priority mode(Tv) at 1/200 (I shifted between 1/160 and 1/200, but this was 1/200) and ISO 1600 - which most of the time meant it ended up at f/2.8, but this got shot at f/3,5.

Started out in aperture priority mode, but that forced it to unuseable shutter speeds most of the time. Decided that I had to freeze the subject - and then light would have to be what it could be. If it wasn't sharp it wouldn't matter anyway.

I owe a little of the honors to my 70-200mm 2.8L IS USM, btw. Even though its not at its absolute finest wide open, it still completely consolidated my belief that I am not crazy using that kind of money on my hobby. :)

And she has seen it. I wrote to her on Facebook, and she replied that she like several in the set and if she could use them on her myspace page. That was a yes. :)
They are not there yet, but theres a few songs to listen to: http://www.myspace.com/kiraonline

[Tallison]

10. Awesome feedback...

I recently ordered the 70-200 2.8 VR for my Nikon, exactly for concert and low-light candid people photography, and your shot has so validated the $$$ layout, which makes me queasy to think about. And yes, I do it just for the fun of it, too. But shots like the one you posted make the best gifts; it's so satisfying knowing they'll be cherished by the recipient for life.

Thanks for the tech feedback - it's a pipedream that every image I see includes its specs.

[dbmk]

11. They don't link to details on that page in Flickr

But it is there - here is all the detail that could possibly be attached to a picture I think :) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenrk/3497776469/meta/in/set-72157617587375744

Loaded it into Lightroom 2 and exported is as 16-bit TIFF.
I applied some sharpening and noise reduction in Photoshop, using the plug-in called Noise Ninja, to get rid of the ISO noise - which wasn't too bad on this picture, thankfully.
Converted to 8-bit and exported to JPG and uploaded to Flickr.
For this one I uploaded the original and Flick then resizes it for the other sizes.
For everything else in the two sets, I batch processed them in Photoshop to JPGs with a max width or height of 1024 and uploaded them.

The light they put on the stage is what provides the magic - and your working conditions. Thankfully the lead singer is out of the smoke almost all of the time. :)
I started out with aperture priority, because thats what I seem to read everywhere that people do for concert shots. But since I had maxed the ISO out at 1600 and I could see that f/2.8 would force it to too slow shutter speeds, I changed to shutter priority and could see from the results that it was good enough. Played around a little with the shutter speeds and zoomed in on the results on the display to see what they delivered in terms of sharpness, and decided to stay with 1/160 or 1/200.
It was an outdoor concert btw - but it was almost entirely dark at that time.

[Tallison]

13. Not sure I could shoot my D70 at 1600

without bad noise; it's one of the reasons I dream of upgrading to the D300 or D700 with Nikon's superior noise-reduction technology. 2-stops difference can be huge! I use Nikon Capture RAW processing.

How slow a shutter speed can you get at 200mm focal lengths while handholding your IS?

[dbmk]

14. I use a Canon 400D (Xsomething in US)

It does not have the newest image processor, like the 500D - and the iso noise was pretty bad on a lot of the shots, especially in the darker ares. The one above had handled it pretty well though. Don't know how the D70 stacks up against the 400D in that area - but I would not expect to be worse.

Applying some noise reduction and scaling down in postprodiction gets rid of most of it.

I am considering getting the new 500D or the 50D for ISO noise reasons though(and for a few others, but thats one of the bigger ones). Just to get the extra room to play with.

Haven't really tested my handholding limits on the lens - I could probably go slower than I did here. Pretty sure I could go to 1/50-1/80 with decent results.

But the main problem here was not my shaking - but people moving around. And they still haven't quite invented the technology that will literally freeze the subject when you hit the trigger.
Would be nice though. :)

Even on a couple of shots at 1/160 I could see the microphone fx. being razorsharp - while the singers movement had blurred him a little. But by far the most at that speed was sharp as could be.

[Tallison]

15. One last observation:

I don't know if it's bodies in the foreground or what, but whatever the source, it imposes a fantastic vingetting effect to the shot.

[dbmk]

16. It is. I was about 15-20m away.

I was considering cropping them out. But for the exact reason you state, I kept it as it was.

[Richard D]

6. beautiful shot!

Nailed it.

[JeffR]

7. "Nailed" doesn't begin to do these shots justice

"Aced", "cinched", "triumphed", "conquered" - those capture them better. A really great series.

[Mira]

9. It sings. It aches. It rocks. I'm so glad she has seen it. Congratulations. WOW

[TahitiNut]

12. Awesome. That's an album cover. Easy.

:applause: