I recently went to photograph "The Secret Garden", being performed by The Melodramatics in Edinburgh. They had a performance space surrounded on three sides with either two or four rows of seating. The director warned me it was dark, and so for the first act I put away the 24-105mm f/4.0 and brought out the nifty fifty (f/1. 8 . For such a cheap piece of glass it did an excellent job
#1. The director told me it was okay to use flash, but really... OTOH, I wish I had been able to get some colour into the girl's skin.
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#2 - again f/2.8, again the face washed out. Biut I love the expression!
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#3 - Dickon in the background, should you know the story...
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#4 - Wow, we were at f/4.0 in this dream scene
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#5 - I loved the looks on the kids' faces... sorry for the watermark
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#6 - Act two, the lightin not plotted so using working light. I was able to go to the 24-105
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#7 - A different Mary Lennox for Act Two (both were under 16; they needed to alternate during the run. One got to do Act One at the dress, another Act Two. Both were good enough that I wonder why I bother going on stage... )
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#8 - Careful cropping here as time considerations meant that the lady was wearing a t-shirt and leggings, ready to leave the theatre before a 10pm deadline. Not very Victorian...
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More at http://www.stagepics.co.uk
So, overall I feel really uncomfortable with how washed-out the pictures look. There is just no colour on the skin. I think this is because of the lack of spot metering on the 350D, combined with less-than-adequate post processing. When I get time I shall go back to the RAW files, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid getting into this situation in the first place?
regards,
/alan
PS I've just discovered that smilies count as images towards your photo count... You learn something new every day!
