middle school concert C&C

[jdando]

Hey gang;

Looking for guidance on how to get some better pictures.
These are from your basically dim, middle school auditorium, me sitting halfway back.

EXIF should be intact
Shot in raw, with a monopod and the 75-300. Tried to fix the white balance in DPP.
Not sure if I have camera shake or bad focusing:o

Thanks in advance,
jeremy

[tonydee]

Hi Jeremy,

Top one seems much better in sharpness than the second. Shooting at 300mm accentuates your camera shake and reduced you to f/5.6 when your lens can do f4. I'm sure you realise 1/20th and 1/25th of a second's just too slow without IS. You're already shooting ISO1600, so basically you're hitting the technical limitations of your equipment. Simplest option is get closer. Similarly frustated, I was impulsive/crazy enough to buy a 70-200 f/2.8 IS, but I realise not everyone's going to go that route (they're heavy and all). Tripod's obviously slightly better than a monopod. If you've reached the limits of what unsharp mask can do, you could also try running the pictures through something like FocusMagic, which one discussion in here recommended, and which can be downloaded for free trial from http://www.focusmagic.com/ .

Best of luck,

Tony

[lawmans3]

I took a shot at helping with some color correction and noise reduction. It helped a little...;) I'm hoping their shirts were blue???

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