A Cappella Concert

[elbirth]

Fairly recently I began shooting for my college's newspaper. I've only had a few assignments so far, and Sunday night was one of them. I was covering an A Cappella concert by our all-girls group, the UNC Loreleis. I was shooting with my 20D and borrowed a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 from the photo desk (I have the Canon 70-200mm, but it's just f/4).

Considering my non-experience with shooting in a theater setting and all, I was kind of happy with my results, but if anyone has any tips that could help me improve in this sort of situation, I'm all ears. In particular, dealing with exposure, since the spotlight was rough to deal with- either the soloist would be exposed right with the people in the back being too dark, or the people in the back would be right with the soloist being very close to being blown out.

And in case anyone's interested, the 3rd shot is what was printed in today's paper, cropped down slightly.



1.
http://www.unc.edu/~dhendley/acappella1b.jpg



2.
http://www.unc.edu/~dhendley/acappella2b.jpg



3.
http://www.unc.edu/~dhendley/acappella3b.jpg

[taygull]

I like the shots...it would be nice to see some other angles?

[elbirth]

thanks...
unfortunately that's pretty much the only angle I was able to get... they wanted me to stay up in the balcony for who knows what reason.

[taygull]

Move around..zoom in more...zoom out more..all of these are from the left. I'm sure you got some nice shots.

What you should do is put a nice frame around them go print a $5.00 8x10 and take it to them...maybe they will give you more access?

[DwightMcCann]

Other than a slightly too tight crop these are really grand! As for Live Entertainment advice, I suggest you go to the Talking About Photography Forum and read the Live Entertainment Q&A (link in my .sig below.) :-)

[elbirth]

that might be interesting... may have to consider doing something like that to see what comes of it

[elbirth]

Cool, I'll look into that Dwight :)

[dzstudios]

I like the first one more - the expressions are precious! They make a lovely picture and congrats on being published!


...

[StealthLude]

your 70-200 f/4 didnt cut it in that light? Did you even try putting it on?

[René Damkot]

Nice images. Not overly happy with the cropping though: #2 and #3 have too much 'headroom' and all have not enough 'footing'. I think zooming out *a bit* would have helped. (you can always crop in PS).
As for the lighting: In this case I'ld have shot RAW. You can then develop a CR2 twice: Once for the soloist, once for the group. You could also use a different WB for each, to lower the difference in color (like in #2).
If shooting RAW isn't an option, just avoid blowing the highlights, and use curves in PS:
(Gave it a quick try, if editing is not okay with you, I'll remove it)
http://www.moonglade.net/~rene/POTN/acappella2b.jpg

[Curtis N]

they wanted me to stay up in the balcony for who knows what reason.So you wouldn't annoy the audience. When you are granted the privilege of shooting a performance of any kind, it's best to be mindful that everyone there paid money to see and hear the performance, not some dude with a big, loud camera clicking away. Usually people are fairly tolerant if you make all reasonable efforts to be discreet and unobtrusive.

Exposure-wise, those shots are certainly a lot better than what I got the first time I shot a similar event. Between the spotlights and the black dresses, it's a metering nightmare, and you did very well.

[elbirth]

StealthLude: Yes, I tried my 70-200mm f/4 and at f/4, it was metering at like 1/40 or slightly lower, which gave a bit of motion blur. I should mention, though, that they changed the lighting a bit between songs and some even during songs. The shots above were some of the brighter lighting examples, with most being quite a bit darker. Since I had no idea what the lighting would be like for each, I ended up keeping the Sigma lens on since it did have the f/2.8 in case I needed it.

René: I don't mind the editing at all, I welcome any help offered :) That does look a little better. I shot just JPEG because the paper currently doesn't have RAW support, and when I saw that I was shooting in burst, I didn't want to fill up my card and have no more room- in retrospect, I still had enough room after all my shots were taken though, so I should have for my own purposes.

Curtis: Thanks! And yes, of course... the 20D does make quite a bit of racket when it fires :D