Forum > The Fruit Stand (Photography)

New favorite picture I've ever taken!

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Roxy Poodle:

--- Quote from: _________ on October 14, 2012, 06:55:27 PM ---Very nice.  And a compact camera, no less!!!

--- End quote ---

It's a solid compact -- full manual settings and a bigger sensor than your typical compact -- but yes, still a compact! If anyone's on the market for a compact, I'd recommend the camera I have or its Panasonic equivalent in a heartbeat. (Notes: The Leica comes with Lightroom, so it's worth the extra cost if you need the software; otherwise, I'd go for the Panasonic. Also, I believe both Leica and Panasonic have recently released/will very soon release new versions of these cameras, so now might be a good time to spring for one ... in fact, when I was searching for links for the cameras, I saw that B&H has the Panasonic for $319. This is an absurdly good camera for that price!)

I'm also really psyched about some pictures I took on Saturday night at Santigold's show at Roseland Ballroom in NYC. I was way off to the side, so the lighting was somewhat darker than it would have been had I been dead-on, but I think I managed to work with it pretty successfully. I'm really happy with these three shots. I posted a full set of photos from here show to Flickr.

makeda:
I looked at the Flickr set.  You are crazy good at this!

Mrtambourineman:
I have no idea how you get those shots in that lighting!   :confused:

They look great. 

Roxy Poodle:

--- Quote from: Mrtambourineman on October 17, 2012, 04:13:46 PM ---I have no idea how you get those shots in that lighting!   :confused:

They look great.

--- End quote ---

First of all, thank you to both you and ___________ for your kind words! I'm still very new at this, so positive reinforcement feels better than it really probably should! :)

As far as getting the shots in low light, technically, it was pretty straightforward. For smaller, lower-light shows, I typically work within the following pretty limited parameters:

- No higher than ISO 400. My camera is totally fine up to and including ISO 400, but image quality begins to degrade after that. Generally speaking, I find I'm better off bumping up the exposure while I'm editing than using a higher ISO while I'm actually shooting. Certainly, there's a tipping point where it's so dark that I'm better moving up to ISO 800 (the next option after ISO 400 on my camera), but I'll generally choose a slightly dark shot at ISO 400 over a still-dark-but-better shot at ISO 800.

- 1/100 shutter speed or faster. Sometimes I'll drop down to 1/80 if the lighting absolutely requires it, but I find any slower than that is just useless for shooting musicians. I'd rather have a dark, but clear photo which I might be able to rescue in editing than a big ol' blur that's useless any way you slice it!

- Aperture as wide open as my camera will allow at the focal length. My camera allows me to shoot at F3.3 at full zoom (90mm), which I believe, at least, is good for a compact. Aperture at zoom is pretty much the key thing I look at when I'm checking out cameras or lenses just because nearly all my usage will be concerts! 

So I play a little within those confines to get the brightest shots. After that, it's mostly about capturing the right moment. I spend a really pretty spectacular amount of my free time either attending concerts, watching live shows on YouTube, or looking at pictures of musicians, so I think I've developed a pretty good sense of what I like and when a "moment" is going to happen. I love (LOVE) taking pictures at bigger shows with crazy lighting set-ups, but I typically can't get the seats at a big show that I can get at the smaller ones, so that's the trade-off. When I do get good seats at a big show, it's more fun than anything else in the world!!! I had sixth row seats this summer to Linkin Park, and I loved every minute of it! Almost every picture I took was usable; in a lot of cases, the only editing I had to do was to get rid of some of the stage junk cluttering up the backgrounds of pictures. Some favorites from that show are here. The rest are here:

diablita:
wow! 

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