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Low Light Q&A

Yeah, one thing that you don't think we've talked about yet is meat oring mode. That was something that people are asking about, you know? I think we mentioned it very, very early on very early on metering mode in this situation, I turned it, but I don't even look at it if anything, I leave it in matrix metering at all times, but I'm not concentrating on the meter because remember when I shot that photo earlier and I had the whole can in the background in aperture priority and I went to one twenty five hundredth of a second, the meter becomes useless in this situation if it seeing light from the background because it's becoming way too bright and the meter is just going to be thrown off, so that won't be a good representation aa lot of what happens here, I'm going to take a little load off right here. A lot of what happens when you shoot concerts is you get your settings pretty darn close within a few clicks this way in a few clicks that way, and you deal with mike making the light cha...

nges. He had the lights vory dark for certain areas, that's when I went to start to shoot with the wide angle lens, because I know that I have a better chance of getting focused with the wide angle lens the lower the light, the situation, the harder it's going to be to focus with those longer lenses, and I think that the wider lunches have a better opportunity to get your focus right and that's why I switched to that when we did that, but in terms of media ring, you can leave it on spot me during that could be your best chance to get the closest representation of what your actual meter should be, but I'm ignoring it the whole time I'm in my head, my head is my light meter and that that comes with experience and I think you need to challenge yourself out there to shoot in manual and just logically think about the changes you need to make it's too dark, so if it's too dark, what are my options? Aiken bumped the I s o up higher aiken drop my aperture from whatever it's at open it up a little bit more where I could slow my shutter speed down because it was too dark I'm letting more light and go the other way around it's there's. Too much light I need to cut down on the amount of light. Well, one of the first things you can do, you can raise your shutter speed if you want to do that, if you need that faster thing, I wanted to be around four hundred no less than three twentieth for most of this stuff I don't know what the d thirty three hundred was same thing thing wow same thing with the meter in there is I didn't really focus on that meter I was just in manual figuring that out where was I going somebody throw me back cause I'm starting tio brain dump here I feel like you kind of hit it I don't get it I know where I was going rest one more thing yeah sorry not that wasn't being a no go read it I'm not going to say it stephen you know why I'm tired of saying I'm not gonna be a dick because I'm not gonna be a dick but it is what it is it comes off however it's gonna come off but I didn't mean to be a dick so if it's too bright shutter speed goes up shut the apparition aperture down a little bit you're at two eight go to three to three five f or do something like that drop your eyes so it's going to be less sensitive ten percent less mohr every click you take okay next question barry s q is it best to use high or low continuous shutter to capture movement shots not advocating full burst but do you do that other than rather than like a one shot yeah that's I lowered it here because I didn't want a motor drive but I think utilizing your speed bursts when is necessary is important when leslie is going to go into a jump and I'm focused and locked in on her I want to snap off two, three, four shots of that jump I don't advocate sitting there for for two seconds in my camera and taking ten frames it takes eighteen to twenty frames in those two seconds but yes if you if you I think anything that you use where you consciously think about it where you go I may need the motor drive here and if that does occur I'm going to do x y or z if you can justify it and you thought it out, then by all means do it but just don't sit here and spray and pray the whole time and take eight million shots like our friend edgar does you don't want to do that? Yeah, I hope that answered that I think that answered it wonderfully. Any questions from here in the room? All right, we got more from online we've got oh you got one just spit it out and I'll repeat it it's just back like yeah so the question is what do you do if there's not a lot of whitewashing the front and it's mostly backlight, it is one of the hardest situations to shoot in at some point there's there's concessions you have to make I think when that happens when there's more backlight, you may want to stay to the sides of the stage, because when leslie turns her face that way, part of her face is going to be hit by the light in the back. That's going to give you an opportunity to get light on her, to get those shots. If you stayed right here in the front and she's too dark here and the backs totally blown out, it may not work, because if it's too dark in the front, your charge may end up being too slow. Your eyes so is going to be too high in the way that you saw that you just may need to work the sides and maybe get to the side of the stage and focus in on the artists being from the side. Stephen, did you have anything to add? I was just going to bring up something else basically average venue this size there's normally security guards in a photo pit with you say, two or three obviously don't have any with you right now. How do you work around them? Especially you say, the taller ones that are directly in the middle where the singer would be or something? Yeah, we don't have any of the security guards here, you just have to work around them, you hope that they're not blocking a great place that you shoot, I found that they mostly don't stay in the middle. I think you noticed that too, or have you there's certain situations where they definitely have been there and I wish they move, but they didn't. I sometimes ask them if they're going to move, if they're going to own their spot, they're going on their spot there, the security guard to stay out of their way as best it can as you can try to squeeze in behind him. Sometimes they move depending on how big they are. A lot of times I found that the pope some at smaller venues, that we should that, like, I would consider it a six hundred seat, seven hundred seat venue to be, uh, you have the best opportunity to shoot shows that venues this size to get in so that's a good thing, they'll usually put security to the last security to stage right something like that and they come in as they need it. But if the security is there, see if you can work around them and if not, you just you just have to work around them. Yes, a lot of people are asking questions about using audio is so do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah sure you do I do what you want to give away a lot of guys I I don't think that you want the cameras that that that's going to rely on the meter so then tell you what the setting should be because that's controlling the so so if the meter gets totally thrown off again it's going to bump the ice so to a place where you may not want it I'm not a fan of letting the camera make that decision for me I think you guys are smarter and you guys at home are smarter and you just need to be secure in your shooting and in your settings to know that you're capable of of get getting the right setting look in a situation like this if you're at thirty two hundred two sixty, four hundred, some of your cameras go to twelve thousand eight hundred these days make your own choices I think you're going to be a heck of a lot better off when you decide what you're setting should be so absolutely I do not advocate using uh auto I esso whatsoever yeah auto I so for video so what about audio eyes? So for video we'll have a whole class on that I'm sure at some point auto I so for video in some of the better cameras these days are really, really good so, like, for example, I'll take two second stanton answer this, but on the nikon d for s and the new d a ten that's coming out, you have this auto I esso mode that lets you lock in your exposure so you could set your shutter speed and set your aperture that's going to stay the same and it's just going to smoothly translate transistor the so so in the future, that's something for video I'm ok with in that situation, cause I I use that, and I think that works well. We had a request from major images, whether we've covered strobe and moving lighting yet I don't know if that's something we've got the ability to do here, I don't, because they say they have a hard time with that focus aspect, and you're not going to focus. I mean that that is one of the things where a lot of those shows where they're strobes a lot of the rock shows you're not going to see you'll see strobes go off, but at mgm concert, things like that, you're going to see that, but with an e g m show focus, when you're just gonna have to focus manually or try to wait till the light goes on when they use a lot of times, they talk. And then the light shines on them you have something that you could focus on look for a light that they have up there a lot of the djs they don't move very far this is a deejay set okay that's a deejay set so if you focus up on that in between strobes going off try to get it and then meeting for the strobe going off is just like a flash you're just going to have to figure it out love it one from leo white in your opinion is it good to have a little motion blur in jumping shots hand string hands on the guitar so like that so that this is again can go both ways it depends what you're going for I think the way that I look at it is I like to be his tax sharpe is possible but if you have movement of some kind in the feet or the hands but the faces tax sharp then I'm ok I'm ok with it personally now again this is all my personal preference there's no right or wrong answer to how this should be done it's just the way that I feel about it so you guys could determine whether you like it or not yourself but in my opinion if we got the guitar player sliding the hand up the guitar but she's nice and sharp and then bam you got that slide going in there some movement then that's all right, because that's that's part of it that's part of the motion you're you're starting to show the motion that's going on in the show stage fog how do you feel about that if say a band brought in their own fog machine just lit up the whole stage with fog is that something that's tough to work with depends on the lighting because the fog picks up like differently if the five is along the ground that's going to add a really awesome dimension and pick up nice light through it as the fog starts the rays if it's really really high it's going to be hard to focus it's also going to take away your contrast but you can blow up the contrast in post I've had this happen where it's it's foggy and it's hazy but then in post production somehow moving my sliders the way that I needed to slide them I was able to make it nothing like the foggy there wasn't there or that the contrast came back that's a good question anything else? Stephen um I don't know if we touched on this earlier but the lighting guy is that someone you make friends with right away especially if you're on tour with the band at each venue stop that try and talk to them say hey give me these colors giving those colors don't give me that they have to be careful because certain lighting guys could be dicks that's their job that's like it's like somebody coming up to you and saying I want you to take a picture this way so it's all in how you worded you upto lighting guy you say hey I saw what you did with the first man that was awesome I loved it what what is your plan for the next the next group to plan on doing a certain kind of wash can you maybe keep it a little brighter tonight uh I sounded philly again was annoy you could you could you possibly do that here's twenty bucks be nice you know we've paid people off before the toe work on the lighting but a lot of times is just letting them do their thing because it's their art and it's also the challenge of getting the shot when I've been on tour with bands I haven't had a lot of control over what they have been able to do because a lot of it comes down to the mood that the artist is trying to set so you don't want to ruin it because it's not just for you even though it should be all about the photographer but it's not all right so what I want to do tio wrap this we're going to play out we're done with the band play two songs for the last five minutes I just got dizzy standing up I'm actually going to kill this. We're not going to go yet, giving a couple of minutes, couple seconds, we're gonna let them play out. We're no. Let the group here take photos because they're going to be showing up tomorrow at the lab were going to call it the lab so that we can possibly critiquing the critique person, some of their results from here, so we're going to give you guys, we're going to call it a three song set. We're gonna let them do three songs, so ban the guys, thank you very much. I'm going to clear the way so that the so that these guys can focus on shooting it's, going to be all them, no fighting in the pin, they're going to play out. Can we do a three song set? Okay, wait. Noticing the melody saving in a way that the problems that we're having a problem of waste time, way it's the same thing every time, time, time I've always been a sucker born of a chicken do I haven't changed dozens up it with you? Because the sooner really, really in the last year with my traveling down the highway about a million bucks and it all seems right it all seems right. Oh, seems like you should be showing just get crazy thing and it but then you broke up with the winch is actually gonna read way made up be what we've gotta know where we all wait we're not so sure we're not soothe so with those way combined with wayne, I always keep things inside that only got us so far, so now wait, wait a minute. This revelation everything intoxication people like kissing, looking like this way has made me oh, e everything way wait, wait way. All right, you we all right here can be of the post. So what they so want ubiquitous? Everything on up there on the beach, off the post so is everything on the pier on the feet of the booth is everything wait, we all right here?