Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV. I'm Ruth Medjber and I'm here
at Castlepalooza music festival. Today I'm going to be answering all those gear-related
questions you guys have been asking. And I'm also going to talk you through
what gear I use.
AdoramaTV presents Out of the Darkroom with Ruth Medjber. So Chris Knight asks
"Given light and colors change constantly, do you set a particular white balance,
use auto white balance or shoot raw and try to get flesh tones or hand tweak
white balance in post?" Personally, I shoot in auto white balance and I've
never ever had a problem with it. You won't really get a lot of mixed lighting
when there's a stage, you know when it's a stage set up, usually it'd be all the same color
temperatures. I guess I'd probably change some tones afterwards in post-production but I
probably wouldn't rely on it heavily. The biggest fear or the biggest challenge
photographers will ever come across is red lighting. When you go to photograph a
gig and the first three songs are all red, it's just so difficult. it doesn't react
well in the camera so if I'm faced with that then yeah, I will rely on
post-production to help me out of that crisis. But ordinarily I just stick it on auto
white balance and the camera knows what it's doing. It's the easier way around things.
So here's a question from Dhaval. Dhaval says
"Most of the time when I shoot any music event or dance event I face problems with
lighting, musicians, especially rock guitarist move so quickly I cannot shoot
on lower shutter speeds and flashes are just not enough because of the
distance from the stage," so he wants to know if I have any suggestions.
Well, flash, you can't use in a photographer's pit, professionally. You're not allowed
flash. Flash is banned, it's very distracting for the artists, so just take
it off your camera and say no to flash. Some of the times, though, if I'm already working
with the band, I can agree with them to use flash certainly at some points but I'd
always have to have permission from the band first.
So if the lighting is really, really poor I could take my camera off the flash,
have it on a remote trigger and hide it somewhere around the back of the stage.
That way when it pops off its not going to annoy the band too much. It might annoy
the crowd for a bit, though, so I wouldn't tend to do it for more than like two
or three flashes per show.Now, the only other way of getting around the lighting
issue is to bump up your ISO, shoot at the fastest aperture you have and as a general
rule I probably wouldn't shoot below an 80th of a second if I'm shooting musicians
because yes, they do move so fast around. So, it really depends on the show. If it's a
punk gig, I'm probably looking at like 250th of a second because I know that they're going to
be jumping around like mad. If it's a solo singer/songwriter or someone that's
quite stationary during the shoot, I could- might even bring it down to
about a 50th of a second and get away with it quite comfortably. So it really depends
on the scenario and on the band that's playing in front you. Lighting is
always an issue with music photographer but the more you get out there and the
more you she's the more you learn to deal with it all and yeah just try
everything you can. Good lens, good ISO and see what you can do.
So here's a nice, broad question.
"What are your go-to exposure settings when shooting in dark venues?" OK, if I'm on a
1.4 lens, I'm shooting at 1.4. Not everyone will have such a fast lens. If
you're using a kit, you might be only on 3.5 or 5.6, so open it up as
fast as you can, shoot at the lower aperture.
and then I guess it depends on the camera, what ISO you're shooting at. If
your camera can comfortably manage 2000/ 4000 ISO. like my D4S can,
then by all means shoot at it. If you noticed that your camera kind of tends to
fall apart over 800 ISO then there's nothing you can do about that. Shoot the maximum what you're
comfortable with, your camera . The best way to do that is go into a dark venue and
to find out what your ISO, what you're capable level is, go in shoot over
the range up to whatever you can manage and then bring it into Photoshop,
or onto Lightroom or something like that. Bring it into your computer, enlarge it and see the amount
of noise at 800 or at 2000, or whatever the maximum you could reach up to.
You'll notice some images just fall apart beyond 800, depending on your
camera and then in terms of shutter speed I probably stick to around 125th of a second,
But if the light is so so so bad, then a 50th of a second, 60th
of a second. Really, again, depends on the amount of movement that's on stage. If
they're quite slow and steady movement I can even, like, move with the band, so I
know this looks a little bit crazy but when I'm shooting a band, if they're swaying, I tend
to sway as well to keep with movement with them so I mean it really depends on
the situation. If you've got a guy that's jumping off an amp stack you got to be
doing that at around a 500th of a second to catch in mid-air so it's
quite a general question but let's just say, for example say, a 125th
of a second, 800 ISO, 1.4 on your aperture.
So a lot of people come up to me and say 'Oh, I wish I had your camera'
you know, this, that and the other, then they're really gear envy I suppose. Don't
worry too much about the gear you have, just concentrate on getting the best
shots out of the camera that you already own. The only way that you can do that is
by getting to know your camera.
You know, you need to be shooting these gigs almost like automatically. Your
fingers should know where your aperture is, your other finger should know where your shutter
speed is. You should be reading that light meter inside your viewfinder, the
entire time. I mean, I shot the first few years of my professional career on a
Nikon D70 which is quite an entry level camera and I also used a Kit Lensfor
so, so long. I mean you can make it work, you just have to be a little bit smart
about it and know how to use your manual controls in that camera. So don't worry
too much if you haven't gotten a Nikon D 4S. Just go with what you have. Be
quite confident and just learn as much as you can from watching tutorials and
just getting to grips with your camera and shoot, shoot, shoot. The only way
you'll ever get better at this is not by upgrading your gear, but by upgrading
your knowledge, so just go practice, shoot, learn and enjoy it.
Thanks for joining me on the show, I hope you enjoyed it.
Feel free to subscribe to the channel because I'm going to be bringing you back some more great
videos. If you want to brush up on your own photography skills, check out the Adorama
Learning Centre where we post lots of great articles, tips and tricks. I'll see you again soon.
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