Things I learned and things I didn't
Event venues can be really dark. A fullframe camera is recommended.
In party situations I can use my flash to brighten up the scene, but during concerts this a big no, as it totally changes the lighting of the scene and distracts the performers.
It might be acceptable during dancing, but I was out of luck - the ceiling was black and bouncing of the wall would have made very weird light.
Bad thing about speedlights is that they don't come with gels/ you can't change the warmth of the light. So it's also a hassle balancing lights the right way.
It's vital to use a camera with good AF in dark places and during fast action. I struggled a lot with my K50 wich doesn't work that good with both my lense: DA50-135 and Tamron 17-50. Both have been adjusted to -10 in camera as they don't focus right out of the box. In dark scenes their inability to focus precisely is magnified. It's recommended to take as many shots as possible - to refocus as many times as possible. Even keeping that in mind I think my focus hit the mark less than 20%.
Because of that I feared using an open aperture, which was f/2.8. Instead I used an aperture from f/3.5 to f/5.6 to give me more room to play. A narrower aperture means less light which also meant slower shutter speeds and higher ISO. It's vital your equipment works as intended. In my case it clearly doesn't or it just isn't that well suited for low light situations.
I found my lenses tended to focus on background elements a lot more than actually on the subjects. Turns out the AF points in your viewfinder are only small indicator spots. The real AF spot areas are VERY big, they might even overlap and cameras tend to prefer focusing on thing with lots of detail. So my lenses really liked bright background elements over the main subjects in about 80% of the cases. It almost felt like the AF was on auto, but in reality the focus points are simply that big that it's impossible to lock on to a target. I really start to hate my K50's af system.
In retrospect I think I should have used a tad bit more open aperture and an faster shutter speed in most cases, as blur was very common. I hoped to avoid blur by shooting in high speed mode (6fps) every time I took a shot and later simply select the best ones.
You really can't fight raising your ISO to the extremes in low light situations. I left my ISO on auto from 100 to 3200/4500. I underexposed ALL my images, because shadows are recoverable, but highlights aren't. In dark rooms with spotlights it's easy to make the mistake of exposing for the darks, while it's actually the highlights that you should be worried about. At high ISOs the highlights get very unforgiving - there's nothing to recover once you blow them. (If you do, try a black and white conversion. This can save a lot of images as it's not the blown highlights that are so very distracting, but the total lack of color that comes with it.)
Don't try to raise the shadows a lot if the scene was dark in the first place. There's no point. You'll simply introduce a lot of noise. Do the opposite. Drop the blacks to increase contrast. Embrace the interplay between light and darkness.
I shot 1900 shots in total during 3 hours. 524 of them I chose to use.
I presented my pictures at 2048px on the long edge to my client using Google Drive.
Why so little? Because at ISO3200 most images are noisy anyways. At 1:2 they seemed good enough. Which is 2464px on the long edge for my camera, but to make things easier (reduced bandwidth and better facebook scaling) I made them all 2048px. And ofc I offered them the option, if they ever desired a little bigger files, to get them.
Is it good giving so many photos?
I've read online that some people only select the very best images from events, so their work will represent them in the best manner possible. A lot of work comes from referrals. It makes sense in that regard.
But I don't think it's really fair to the client. I think when photographing an event I should give a lot of images, because it gives a better overview of the event and it gives the client the option to choose which pictures to use somewhere else. I don't think my work presented to my clients should act like a portfolio.
And the last thing I learned: editing takes a long time. I thought I'd get away with editing about 8 hours. I ended up doing at least 20h. All I did was go over each picture 3 times. First time I only focused on picking out the good pictures. The second and third time I focused on editing and fine details.
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My gear:
Camera: Pentax K-50
Lenses: DA*50-135 / DA-L 18-55 WR / Cosinon 1.8 50mm / Tamron 17-50
Flash: Yongnuo YN660
Tripod: Zomei Q555
Phone: Samsung S3
You can find me on:
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Questions about photography are welcome!
Upvote, comment, resteem and follow if you like!
Have a great day!
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Want free basic income? Look no further.
Free MannaCoin for everyone!
Sign up here: https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=e4b076b016
My gear:
Camera: Pentax K-50
Lenses: DA*50-135 / DA-L 18-55 WR / Cosinon 1.8 50mm / Tamron 17-50
Flash: Yongnuo YN660
Tripod: Zomei Q555
Phone: Samsung S3
You can find me on:
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