Amlima - advice and comments sought

I've recently been taking some photos of a local group of musicians and dancers who call themselves Amlima. They recently did two concerts at the French Cultural Centre here in Lomé. I learnt a lot from the exercise but I'm still not very happy with the some of the results. I know that shooting dark skinned people, particularly against a dark background isn't easy, however a lot of the shots came out very grainy - particularly the background. I don't know whether it was the poor lighting, my poor technique, the camera, the lens . . . So any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'd seriously be interested to know if you think that I might expect better results from one of the newer models (K10D or K20D) Most of the pictures were shot in RAW although I started to run out of memory and so had to switch to JPEG - the 3rd photo below was a JPEG. Have already ordered a new memory card so hopefully that won't be a problem in future.



Sigma 28-80 @ 43mm / 1/60 at f/4.5 / ISO 400



Sigma 28-80 @ 63mm / 1/90 at f/5.6 / ISO 400



Sigma 28-80 @ 63mm / 1/90 at f/6.7 / ISO 400



Sigma 105/ 1/125 at f/2.8 / ISO 400

All photos taken with my *istD and AF360FGZ

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Hi Steve,

Good exposure with flash can be difficult when there is separation between the subject and the back ground - the first of your pictures is a good example of how the light clothing in the forground has become over exposed to compensate for the lack of background light.

To corrctly expose in these circumstances it would be better to use manual flash ie set the flash gun to give a full discharge at each exposure. Estimate the distance and divide it into the guide number of the flash at the ISO set on the camera (ensure both are for feet or meters) and use that figure as the aperture size (f number) eg quide number 30 (100 ISO for wide angle lens and your flash) at 5 meters gives f=6, so use f5.6 and any shutter speed at or slower than your flash sync speed will give correct exposure of a subject at the specified distance irrespective of the amount of the frame it fills.
Note - your flash gun has a zooming effect in which it's guide number changes with the focal length of the lens currently in use so it will be easir to work out the required aperture from the scale on the the screen of the flashgun. NB with zoom lenses and a zooming flashgun this will change each time you zoon in/out even if the subject is the same distance.

I also noticed from the exif information in your pictures that you were shooting at ISO 400 - this will be the some of the cause of the noisy background. If you drop the ISO to the lowest your camera will do then the background will contribute even less to the picture. You can not always control what is in the background of a shot so the lower iso giving a darker background would not only reduce noise in the background but would make it easier to clone out background objects or apply blur to them in photoshop.

If the lighting is adequate then flash may be unnecessary any way - take a spot meter reading from the performers faces and use that for the whole sceen, this is where your higher ISO may play a part - a bit of experimentation may be necessary as some over exposure may be needed to compensate for the dark skin. Although you may end up with some motion blur on moving hands. It's a matter of personal taste but a small amount of motion blur on the drummers hands could improve the second shot by giving a sense of the feverish speed of the druming.

With the auto flash the drummer has come out well as he fills most of the frame and as such a good subject for autoflash. The girl with the drum (?) on her head has come out well too as the light clothing has comensated for the dark background.
The first and last pictures both suffer from light foreground tending to swamp some of the detail eg in the last picture the face gets noticably less exposed towards the top of the picture.

Will you get better pictures from a new camera? - yes and no. A new camera may have better noise control but it will not improve technique etc. I would say learning more about manual flash and improving techinique is more important than changing kit.

I do like all of these pictures, and like you whenever I shot something new a learn more about how to use the camera in that situation so next time your already good phots will be even better.

I shot some bands for the first time last year (from the pit in front of the stage) I learnt that I should have taken a small torch to be able to see my camera settings and that most of my 'keeper' shots were done by spot metering off of the performers faces.

Good luck

Bob

Bob, thank you very much for your detailed suggestions. One thing I learnt was that it was well worth going to some of the groups practices before the concerts to get to know the people a bit and to try some different combinations of lens / aperture / shutter speed etc.

I must admit that I didn't try altering the ISO thinking that 400 was a reasonable compromise for the low light conditions. I don't think that I am really used yet to seeing the sensitivity as a variable - a throwback to pre digital days.

All the best,

Steve