My Ultimate Selfy's.. What can I do better?

This was rather fun, and I get to toot my own horn (because I am the sax player).. Camera on a tripod, 3 bounce flashes, wireless trigger.. I tried to get exposure where I wanted it (each flash) prior to getting on stage, but was limited on time.

But here are a couple of my best selfies.

I had a bounce Left and Right of the stage roughly 2 feet in front of the stage but at the rooms edge. I had one more where the camera was. You can see a shadow cast from each one.

I think a full frame would be a big help, could keep the flashed down.


Shaun

FF won't fix you're focus issue here. The 7DII can handle ISO fine in this lighting. f/3.5 seems to shallow for this or you didn't focus correctly beforehand.

This can't be a selfie, your arm wasn't extended.

For some reason the angle from above does not work for me.

What is the definition of "Selfie"?

BushWacker wrote in post #18385395
What is the definition of "Selfie"?

From Urban Dictionary (one of the many definitions therein):

Selfies are a style of photography wherein

1) the photographer's own face is included in the photograph,

2) and the camera is held by the photographer when the photo is taken.

I find it very interesting that when viewed raw in PS or LR these two images are noticeably sharper and in focus, but viewed here they are not. Guessing something went wrong with the JPG conversion. I am happy to change the images shown here if any one has ideas on what I may need to adjust on the JPG export / conversion.

I was trying to balance my light with out too much negative impact on any one aspect of the photo:

ISO: I feel +1600 ISO and the 7d Mkii gets very noisy (even ISO 1600 at 100% shows a good amount of noise in these shots)

Shutter: 1/100 is about as slow as I felt I could go to get sharp images even with the flashes. We are all moving on stage, albeit slowly.

F/STOP: Trying to zoom in on the 7d MKii screen with test shots proved difficult to get DOF right. F3.5 looked good on that little screen. I even used a DOF calculator to try and help myself:
7D MKii
20mm
F/3.5
25 feet

Calculator showed hyperfocal distance of 20.5 feet with a near limit of 11.2 feet.

I am open to any suggestions one might have to improve technique as I have much to learn.

3 flashes?

You should be able to do better than that I would think. Crank those suckers up. The time to balance flash with ambient is when ambient actually shows something interesting. And, uh, there is nothing interesting going on with ambient.

Judging from the guitar shadow on the guitarist's pink shirt tells me the light from the flash was direct on the subject and below the camera. Really looks like only one flash fired.

Hang white bed sheets to bounce off or buy some white foam core next time.

I would shoot with a longer lens too.

Left Handed,

Thanks for the feedback. This is all a learning experience for me so the more feedback and advise I get, the better.


If memory serves I had the flashes all at 50%. All of them were wearing a white reflector that has an elastic band that holds it on the flash.

There was one almost directly in front of the guitar player 18" below the camera. Camera was on my tripod in the shortest setting sitting on a ledge. This flash was on it's little stand sitting on said ledge 12" to the right of the lens ever so slightly behind the lenses in line with the camera body. It was faced up at a 60* angle (if 90* would be at the ceiling) with the reflector facing the band.

There was another flash to my right on it's little stand on the same speaker my beer is on. This was straight up at the ceiling. The reflector however was in between me and the flash. I was trying to use it to bounce the light against the the wall it was near rather than putting the light directly on us keeping from strong shadows. I can confirm it fired in the original uncropped photo.

The third flash was to the left of the guitar player roughly 15 feet from him on a table. Again the reflector was in between the flash and guitar player. I was again trying to reflect the light against the wall and ceiling to avoid shadowing. I can't confirm this one fired as it is out of the frame, but I have not had the camera actually take a shot when any one of the 3 flashes are not charged and ready, the wireless controller has always kept it from leaving one off. Now when one actually dies and the controller does not see it, then it will fire 2 of the 3.

I am guessing this is why you don't see strong shadows from other two flashes.

Reflector between flash and you and guitarist?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that's going to bounce the light the wrong way.

The old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words.. I am more than happy to post the original which shows the flash in frame nearest me. That would help to explain. I am however trying to follow the rules of the forum and not just post additional pics. I believe it is acceptable however if you request said photo.

I agree with you on the 1600 ISO being about the max I like on my 70D also, any more and I get more noise than I care to deal with. Whereas on my full frame I can push it over 4000 and still get less noise. DOF is always going to be an issue unless you want to pump up those flashes. Personally I usually dial down the flashes 2-3 stops and use them mostly for fill of shadows but you will get very shallow DOF doing this, and you will get motion blur if someone moves too fast. Great for individual artists shots but to get the whole group in focus you are probably going to need to shoot at f/5.6 or higher causing light volume issues so you will either have a choice of cranking up ISO and gaining noise or cranking up the flashes and dealing with that type of light.

I do like your idea of using a 3 flash system pre-setup with a wireless trigger. I'm definitely going to try this in some of the very dark venues I frequent. I'll reserve any advise until I've tried it out myself.

Bottom line for you is to decide if you want a sharper expanded DOF with a lot of flash light or a shallower DOF with more ambient light. Personally I think too much flash usually creates an unnatural lighting look with prominent shadows but you can get a sharper picture of course because you are adding so much light you can speed up the shutter.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=51055

In my opinion, DOF and ISO are a small problem; BORING LIGHTING is the main problem. Could be made so much better with more interesting lighting. Main/fill/fill is so bland - suitable for corporate headshots and family photos, but not for a band on a stage.

Were it me, I'd try to emulate stage lighting:
Main light:
- On a tall stand, at least a foot above the tallest performer's head.
- Far away - at the back of the room, or about ten yards away, whichever is more. More distance to from flash to subject group, means the vocalist in front will receive approximately the same intensity of light as the drummer in the back. (inverse square law).
- Bare, or with a dish-style reflector - short of an actual stage spotlight, a bare hard light will get you most of the way to a stage-spotlight look.
- Pointed directly at the vocalist's face
- If a zoomable speedlight, zoomed in such a way that it covers the whole stage

Additional lights - you can play around with these for a few different looks.
- With gels, blue or green or red. If in doubt, use a nice saturated blue. Put gels on all lights except main!

- Bouncing might work, it'll eat up a lot of power but that's fine, you just want to add some interesting fill. After taking the gel's transmission value into account, power should be a couple stops lower power than the main light. You don't want to "fill" like you would a boring business headshot, you just want to add some interesting color.

- Or, on tall stands at the back corners of the stage, shining down at the performers' shoulders, to give some separation from the black backdrop. (probably where I'd start)
- Or, on the floor at the back of the stage, shining up at the backdrop, also to give some separation and color interest. Think party-atmosphere uplights
- Or, just about anywhere EXCEPT for that boring "fill light that's half a stop below main."

Do a Google Images search for "band on stage" and take inspiration from those. Colors on almost every light! Hard spotlights! I acknowledge that you only have three lights to work with, but you can do a lot with just three lights and a couple colored gels.

Heya,

The light doesn't appear to be bounced, as its casting shadows every where instead. Seems to me this is directional lighting, perhaps bounced through or on a small thing like a reflector. But that's not bounced light in the sense of a huge diffuse light source. I have lit up an entire stage in an auditorium with a single flash bouncing off the ceiling. So with three flashes you should be able to make that place look like lightning struck it. A single main flash to be the primary bounce off the ceiling will illuminate everyone. Then some bounce off a wall to throw a little light from the sides will fill in any light shadows. There's no ambient lighting, so it doesn't matter what your camera settings are for ambient, you should probably just make sure it's enough for adequate DOF and flash duration will be the exposure speed (causing zero blur, if ambient is around -2 or -3 stops below).

Very best,

Oh wow, i posted that screen shot from my phone this morning. Pretty annoying on a large screen, LOL

that was not my intent.