Bar Photography - Cover Band

TLDR: When shooting a semi-active subject in dim lighting, which do you feel is a better approach, a wider aperture or an attached strobe?

Hello. I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks reading stickies and chasing links. I am an amateur, and I find the information here both vast and helpful. If this is the wrong Forum or sub-Forum for this thread, please move it.

I currently have a professional connection which I am able to use for experience now as well as a foot into the entertainment industry. It is with a friend who owns a new entertainment business, is a DJ, and heads up a local cover band. The band has been performing for about 6 months and I have had been able attend both practices as well as almost all of their shows. At many of these venues I have also been their photographer and while I am learning a lot, I am having a hard time overcoming the dark scene of a bar at night. They have been at the location shown in the following photographs for about 6 weeks now and only have a couple weeks left here, unless they get extended again.

I would of course, appreciate any advice in general, but specifically, I am looking at lighting issues. I am running on a tight budget and trying to make sure my equipment investments are both helpful short term as well as wise long term. Much of last week I studied lighting and strobes, and settled on the 430EX II as the best choice. However, before investing so much money (yes to me it is a lot) I bought a Lumiquest softscreen. I tried this out last week as well as trying out simple 3x5 cards as bounce cards on the pop-up flash. I found the softscreen worked best, but after about an hour, one of the patrons complained that the flash was constantly blinding him, so I rigged a 3x5 card to each side of the softscreen, creating a sort of softbox.

This week my reading has led me to consider getting a wider lens instead. Currently I am using a Sigma 28-90mm f/3.5-f/5.6 on a Rebel XT (350D). I have read in other threads on this subject of photogs using no flash and a wider lense for similar situations, and someone said a lens like that could be picked up for as low as $75. That price is far better than the $250 that a 430EXii would cost, though perhaps not as helpful in other situations. When shooting a semi-active subject in dim lighting, which do you feel is a better approach, a wider aperture or an attached strobe?

Here is the link to the photostream, before Photoshop (except the B&W one obviously, which was cropped and desaturated)
http://www.flickr.com …5/sets/72157621​751824794/

As an afterthought, but definitely related. I have been trying to avoid 1600 ISO as I feel it was giving me very grainy shots. You can see this pretty easily in IMG_6059 for example, especially if you run it into photoshop and let it autobalance the levels!

For those not wanting to click through to Flickr, these are 4 unedited selections from my "keepers", 2 that are 'ok' (popup-flash+"softbox"), and 2 that are very dark (no flash)

Further reading (here, and here, here, here) has me leaning towards a lens rather than a strobe, but debating between a 28/1.8 and a 50/1.4, with the final decision appearing to unfortunately rest on price. Input is still welcome, but it would seem this subject has been covered more than a few times already and I was just slow to find the right threads.

The Canon 50mm f/1.4 is pretty good in low light... It's sharp and crops well... The extra f stop is a great advantage...

At one time I also had the 28mm f/1.8 and found it a bit slow in low light and the images somewhat distorted at the edges, so I returned it, and upgraded to an IS f/2.8 zoom.

Strobes are often problematic in a venue setting... Often the venue and bands restrict flash use... and besides, the colorful stage lighting often gets blown out by flash use.

Thanks for the input.

The EF 50/1.8 seems to fit comfortably into my budget, and is available immediately from a local store for about the same price as it is online. I'll be picking it up tonight and putting it to good use at this weeks (and future) shows.

I was thinking about going with the Canon 85 mm f/1.8 USM EF Lens

Any reason why you could go the previously mentioned 50mm over the 85mm? (Besides the obvious price...)

-Zac

One issue you might want to consider with the 50mm F/1.8 is that it tends to focus pretty slow in low light & the manual focus ring is pretty small. That being said for the price it still comes in handy sometime.

Yeah, in my eyes the slower focus is the sacrifice I made to move from the $300-400 down to the $100 range.

RTLimo - the other thing is see is that at 85mm you're going to be forced to be further from your subject, which could be a problem in some environments, and yet be a boon in others, so that is very much your own judgement call. As far as comparing lens performance, I'm the wrong person (read: novice) to comment on that, but i found the reviews on KenRockwell.com to be very helpful, and he basically gives it 5/5 stars, so I would say go for it. As I said above, I chose the 50mm basically because of the price.

Igrado wrote in post #8313642
As an afterthought, but definitely related. I have been trying to avoid 1600 ISO as I feel it was giving me very grainy shots. You can see this pretty easily in IMG_6059 for example, especially if you run it into photoshop and let it autobalance the levels!

Simple: Don't use auto levels, and nail the exposure.

I used to shoot ISO 1600 with my 1D2 constantly. If needed I used ISO 3200.
On my 1D3 I shoot ISO 2500 or 3200 constantly.

Noise is not a problem.
ISO 1600 should be perfectly usable on a 350D.

Flash is both adding light quantity and altering light quality.
You can use it with good results once you understand that.

Here's a link.

Be aware though that flash won't be allowed at many concerts. So learn to work without it. (But learn to work with it as well)

René Damkot wrote in post #8335950
Simple: Don't use auto levels, and nail the exposure.

Noise is not a problem.
ISO 1600 should be perfectly usable on a 350D.

Flash is both adding light quantity and altering light quality.
You can use it with good results once you understand that.

It is great to have a place to come to where I can get my questions answered by experienced photographers. I really appreciate it.

On the photos above I worked primarily with a 'softboxed' popup flash or no flash and I only had my 28-90/3.5-5.6 to work with. This week I was able to use my new 50/1.8. I will be looking over those shots tonight after work and hopefully they will show some improvement over last weeks.

Autolevels is not a term/concept I am familiar with, and nailing the exposure is exactly what I am in the stages of learning now. I'm off to scour the internet and the 20-some bookmarks I have on POTN for more research Their (possibly) final show at this location is next Thursday, so I'm eager to improve in this scenario while the chance is still here!

Thanks so much for your help.

On the lens choice: Have a look at the shots you took with the zoom. What focal length did you use most?

Neither 50/1.4 nor 28/1.8 is stellar wide open: I prefer to stop them down a bit (also good for Depth of field, but you get a bit more DoF on a 350D then I do on my 1.3 crop)
The 50/1.8 might even be a bit better wide open then the 50/1.4, provided you get it to focus accurately, which can be problematic in low light on a 350D... So mind that

Some shots with the lenses mentioned:

28/1.8
1D2; 1/30 sec, f/2.2, ISO 1600

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