Lighting / Noise advice needed

browner01

browner01

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Name
Mike
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Hi All,

i do a lot of live music photography as i manage a band and i hate using a flash for obvious reasons, however i cant seem to get the right balance between lighting and clarity.

i am not sure if it is my camera or my lack of experience.

i have a Nikon D7000 with the following lenses.
50mm 1.4
18-105 3.5

The 50mm can give me very good images, but when in a crowd or at a small gig, its sometimes hard to get good shots.
But when i swap over to my 18-105, i struggle getting a clear image without any noise, i struggle a lot with noise in low light conditions.

could it simply be the lens? or am i missing something?
the camera doesn't seem to perform very well at high ISO's

i dont have any pictures at hand to show, as they dont turn out well so i dont keep them.

does anyone have any advice or tips that i can look into, or ideas where i am going wrong?

cheers
 
Your answer is in your question, but you missed a detail...

When your zoom lens is at 105mm the max aperture is actually f5.6, which is 4 stops slower than your 50mm. So a shot at 800 ISO would need 12800 ISO on the zoom.

The simple answer is you need a faster longer lens, or learn to bag your position better and shoot with the 50mm.

Other answers involve using remote flash on the lighting rig (you might have control of but most music photographers don't) learning to 'love' the noise, convert to B&W, try noise reduction software (it can't perform miracles)
 
Not entirely sure what you mean by clarity but are you not in danger of losing a ambience in you quest for technical excellence?

Back in the day, gig shots would be on mono film at 3200 ASA and be very heavy on the grain and with high contrast. No one worried about 'clarity'.
 
thanks for your replies guys.

when i use my 18-105 for gigs, i tend to keep it at 18mm (3.5) and use it like a wide angle prime. However when i adjust the ISO to compensate for the 3.5 aperture and the fast moving band, the pictures are either very noisy or dark.

I thought the issue may have been the lens but i didn't know if there was any other aspects which i wasn't aware of..... We are always learning after all.

time to put my hand in my pocket.

cheers guys,

mike
 
T_J_G said:
I think the OP suggests the 50 is too long.
Click to expand...

I read it he couldn't get close enough because of the crowd, but I may have been wrong :)
 
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