Ever looked at a set of your photos and cried in frustration?

[Alexandra]

Last night did an event photography at a concert. Loved it... Would have loved it even more if there would have been some light... Had enough trouble seeing details with the naked eye... my poor camera must have had a heart attack...

I know that in theory i should have used a slow shutter speed, but with dancers on the scene wasnt really an option...

So i look at my photos today and feel like crying... Love the composition... Love everything about them except that the only way i can get over the darkness is with so much PP that it looks it!

Arrrghhhhh!

No light, no flash and bloody (great) dancers! By the time i'll make 500 pics look decent enough ill be old...

Just having a whinge....

[windrider86]

Every single one of us has been in your situation. May I ask why you mentioned using a slower shutter speed in a low light situation?
I would think you would need to speed it up a tad if you know you are trying to capture movement. Can you share with us one of your photos? Maybe we can help

[Alexandra]

I did use a fast shutter... I was just saying that in that light i would have at least preferred an option of using a slow one to try and capture some light... Ive done that occasionally with the camera on a tripod shooting stationary stuff and the results were okish even with less light...


Im posting one of the pics i did some work on and the original version... The worked up one needs a crop, but thats just as much as i can save of it...

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by Alexandra

I know that in theory i should have used a slow shutter speed, but with dancers on the scene wasnt really an option...

There are photos that can't be taken. Photography is the capturing of light, and if there isn't enough light you can't get a decent photograph.

There's no point in beating yourself up over it. Situations like this are going to occur over and over again throughout your life. You do what you can under nearly impossible conditions, or you choose not to fight a losing fight, and then you move on.

Stories of "the photo that you didn't get" is as common among photographers as "the fish that got away" is among fishermen. It's part of the experience of being a photographer, and you're well advised to learn to embrace it rather than to whine about it. Just as there will be other fish, there will be other photo opportunities.

The only thing to feel bad about is if you spent so much time trying to get photos that "simply weren't going to happen" that you missed enjoying the actual show.

[BobC]

Can i ask what your shutter speed, aperture and ISO were?

[Alexandra]

I used a shutter speed of 1/100, ISO 800, f-stop 1/5ft... I know i should have used an ISo of 1600... but tried to avoid noise as much as i could...

Tried different other settings, but this seemed to be the ones i got the best results in the trial...

I knew that its going to be a bugger to shoot as soon as i got there, but after taking few trial shots i realised that its not impossible, just that will need lots and lots of work in post. I dont mind PP my pics, and i do that with most of them anyway, but more for artistic value then to fix things up. So yeah, if i spend about 20-25 min per pics in post, i can get usable results, or even good results depending on the size of the photo... But its a bugger because its a lot of work that i dont get paid for as i did it as a favor for a friend...

And i did enjoy the show. My ears were not covered...

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by Alexandra

I know i should have used an ISo of 1600... but tried to avoid noise as much as i could...

if i spend about 20-25 min per pics in post, i can get usable results

You really should have gone with a higher ISO. Noise is not a product of the ISO settings, but of the low number of photons that is captured. In general, you'll get as much or even more noise from using a low ISO and then adjusting in post-processing than you will from using a high ISO. The post-processing adjustments increase the size of the "steps" between levels, which exaggerates the noise.

Note: especially on digicams, using a higher ISO might cause the camera to use a more destructive noise-reduction process when producing JPEGs, and in that case you might have to choose between higher noise from using the lower ISO and then adjusting vs. smearing from the camera's noise-reduction. But for shooting Raw, use whatever ISO setting is necessary to get a good exposure.

[Alexandra]

In hindsight i agree with you that i should have used a higher ISO... Im not that experienced and i found out about taking the pics on that day, so i didnt have a chance to check anything beforehand, which would have been useful...

And to add insult to the injury ive been stupid enough to shot in jpeg, not raw which makes my life so much harder now...

Spending about 15-30 min per photo in post i do get decent results... but i could have made my life easier as 50 hours in post for no pay its rather painful...

Anyways, thank you so muh for the advice and next time will know better....

(Expensive experience)

[fletch]

Did you shoot RAW? The sample pic you showed looks like something that could be processed in 5 mins using Lightroom (or another suitable RAW development tool), no problem. You could even copy your settings to all photos to cut down on the RAW development time even more.

Noise may be an issue but noise removal software should do the trick no problem.

[Alexandra]

I shot in jpeg... which i regretted later and on Pp in photoshop... I ended up finding some short cuts and some noise reduction filters that do help... But on some pics i still did it manually, bit by bit...