The Factory - Contemporary Dance

Hello all! Last week a choreographer friend of mine ran her season of "The Factory". I went along and shot it twice. The first night I used my favourite, the Tamron 28-75mm and then a couple of nights later with my Canon 50mm. At best I was shooting at 1600 ISO but mostly @ 3200. I hope you enjoy!

As always, constructive critique and comments are welcome.

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Nice shots for such high ISO. Colors could be corrected through adjusting the WB, but I think this is the effect you are aiming for. I like #2, somehow looks funky. Both of those lenses are great performers.

My experience when shooting high ISO is that white balance becomes more critical as colors seem to go catywampous much more easily. Since these don't appear to use stage lighting and therefore may not benefit from strong color casts, I would lean toward having a "white card" in a test image and use it to do a bit of color correction. I love the graffiti background, particularly in #3. This also looks to me to be a venue/style that you could easily conquer with your high level of concert Live Performance skills, Angus. Would like to see more, perhaps some using the 'blurring' techniques. I have limited connectivity these days so I may fall off this thread.

Thanks for your comments!

BottomBracket: The high ISO noise was quite attrocious this time. Fortunately web-sized images don't show it up so much. I think I'll need to look into noise reduction. But yes, my lenses are great for that. I think some extra reach via an 85mm f/1.8 would have helped also.

Dwight - the first images was shot in JPEG with some colour corection in Photosop CS. The latter two were in RAW - my first time working with RAW and first time using CS RAW plugin. I don't know if I'd go to RAW for all my concert photography - at least not until I have a more powerful computer. I will have another look at the colour balance. Thanks for the tips

I have used the CS Raw plugin for PS and it's pretty good but much on the lines of Canon's own raw tool. I read somewhere in these forums about a piece of software called Raw Shooter Essentials 2005. It's a free piece of software (although the website give the impression it's a trial version) and you have to register to be sent a download link via email but it is far more versatile than the Raw plugin and the Canon Software.

At the price, it's worth giving it a try.

Thanks for the heads up

Angus, I have better home connectivity than ever, but my world is in boxes that need unpacking so I'll be in and out and will be brief. The Raw Shooter Essentials comes highly recommended (I have it) but I don't shoot RAW so can't speak to it ... they are coming out with a 'pay for' version using input from the free version, but the free version will always be free.