Black Hats – Witney Art Studios – 14/01/2012

I’m not going to upload all of the shots from this night, since they all went on facebook pretty shortly after the night.   I wanted to upload these, because of doing something different with them…

I’ve shot these guys a few times now, so if you want to see some more “normal” shots, feel free to check out these posts.

As for these shots.   The room was pretty dark (actually, it was fine up until they switched off the lights, but that’s another matter).   Since I was allowed, I set up a flash to the side, pointed up at the ceiling to get some decent illumination over the whole area.   Since most of my work is done in venues where flash isn’t allowed, after getting some more “normal” shots of the band, I decided to experiment a little and get something different.   After all, practicing different techniques is the way to improve right?   For an explanation of what I was doing for these shots, head down to the “shooters notes” section.

Shooters Notes:

OK, firstly, settings:

• Flash – set to give me a good exposure at f3.5
• Aperture – f3.5
• ISO – 400 (I believe)
• Shutter Speed – between 1/10 and 1/5

So, whilst I was keeping the shutter open that long, it’s worth pointing out that MOST of the ambient light wasn’t having much effect on the shot.   The rope lights on the other hand, were picked up nicely.

Like an idiot, I had my flash set to rear curtain sync, which, whilst it might be a good idea if you’re not moving the camera, was an incredibly bad idea for these shots.   I had to compose the shot, focus, lock my focus, move the camera, press the shutter, and move the camera back to the right position before the flash fired.   It would have been much easier (and removed the guesswork) to have the flash fire on my composition, and then moved the camera, but hey, you learn to check these things.