Live rock concert - colour/exposure help

[tyasa81]

Hi guys... i just had the privilege to stumble upon a live open air concert at clark quay... decided to try taking a few photos and enjoying the songs... the band is called goober guns from uk... i'm not sure if they are famous since i've never heard of them... but their performance is stellar... very entertaining...

now for the photos... i never had this much trouble with colour cast and exposure before... they were spot lit with coloured lights... and no matter how i adjust the wb (shot in raw)... i will blow out a particular channel... i dont mind the colour on the skin, it is a rock concert... but i seem to be losing quite a bit of detail in lots of areas... i saved some details by going b&w on some of the photos... but i'm thinking there has to be a way to save them in colour as well... i'll be posting some of the troublesome ones...


Exposure 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture f/1.4
Focal Length 85 mm
ISO Speed 400

there's some trouble spots on the skin where it looks blown out, but the blown out channels changes with different wb settings... i got lucky here and had a decent wb spot where i can get decent detail back... i had others where the wb is almost max to the left or right for the orange/blue and green/magenta and still cant get a proper wb to get details...

i had others that are worse than this but when converted to b&w i can get back most of the texture and tattoos (other guy) but there's no way i can get those back in colour...

so my question...
1) is this a problem with the exposure or wb?
2) this being my first try shooting someone in a colored spot lit setting, is this a common problm?
3) what's your best solution?
4) concerts with changing lighting, how do you meter? i use center weighted since the back is fairly dark... and i use ap... i can't imagine going manual will help with the contant changes in lighting... btw... center weighted is taking the meter from the active focus point right? and not the actual center of the frame...

[3bayjunkie]

did you try bracketing your shots? going down -2 or -3 might help?

[tyasa81]

3bayjunkie... thanx for your reply... admittedly i did not bracket my shots since i was trying to capture the moment... what you are suggesting means that it is a problem with the exposure and not the wb? because i think i saw 1 or 2 channels being blown since the colored light creates a spike in one of the rgb channels while leaving the others underexposed? does what i said about wb even makes sense? can the sensor do that?

[edbayani]

exposure is not bad. it is really the colored lights that gives it the blu cast. try levels and with the middle eyedropper, click on the gray area below the guitar pickup. then in hue abd saturation slide the hue slider a bit to the left.

[3bayjunkie]

actually i think it looks good. that is normal for a concert with lighting. i was just giving you an idea to maybe help make it more appealing to yourself

hopefully you shot in raw and you can edit the white balance in post.

[tyasa81]

edbayani... thank you... i haven't tried the hue channel... i'll try it on some of the photos when i got home to see what it does..

3bayjunkie... thanx for the compliment... i actually didn't mind the colour cast... it's just that i was hoping to get some details back on some (the drops of sweat, tatoos etc) that makes the performance stellar in my opinion... these guys really put a lot of energy into it... only dissapointed in that i lost those fine details in most of the photos...


Exposure 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture f/1.4
ISO Speed 1000

here's another one on what i meant... they are literally soaked, but in the pictures it just looks like their skin is glossy... maybe i should've gone closer to get more detail shots... cropping it close doesn't really cut it i'm afraid... i can't save this one in colour so i turned it b&w... which really helps a lot

[3bayjunkie]

that one looks really good. I like it!

[edbayani]

the bw would have looked good also in color. good shots!

[tyasa81]

Thanx for the compliments you guys..

edbayani... how did you get the colour from what i posted? here's the sooc (uneditted raw) it looks crappy.. your colour looks better... notice the tatoo on his arm is blown out in the colour (mine) but not in the b&w?

[tamcry]

My settings are ISO 1600
manual exposure
Spot metering
aperture always F/2.8
SP around 1/160
continuous autofocus
single-point autofocus
If a lot of lighting is going on I wait for the best time and just fire off quick shots.

Only lens I use are the 24 -7- and the 70-200 F/2.8
Every now and then I will use my 80mm prime.

Hope this helps a bit.