Photos: Family Force 5 @TOURantula

Family Force 5 brings the Cray! Cray! on the TOURantula in Pittsburgh, PA.
I just love, Love, LOVE to photograph these guys. So much fun to watch and ridiculously challenging to shoot.

First, MAJOR SHOUT OUT ..to the crew (from the merch folks to tour manager Sam) and ChapStique, FF5′s guitarist. It was awesome having time to hang with everyone. They couldn’t have been kinder to me. As a matter of fact I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show where everyone was this welcoming. Can’t wait to meet up with them again at Creation NE!

Shooters Notebook:

Cameras: Nikon D7000
Lenses: Nikon 80-200 f2.8, Tamron 17-50 f2.8, Nikon 50 f1.8

This show was brutal. There were no seats, just an open dance floor, four opening bands and no photo pit; I was relegated to shoot from the corners or back behind the crowd. In terms of lighting, it was like shooting in a cave. Tons and tons of backlight with a little sidelight thrown in.. almost no front lighting at all. I don’t know if all you photographers know this, but too much backlight kills the contrast in an image..and this was extremea.

I really pushed my gear on this one. I started shooting at 1600 ISO and quickly realized that wasn’t enough. So I switched to ISO 3200. (I was told images were usable at this speed, and as you can see they are).. but this was just for starters.

Photographing FF5 is like playing wack-a-mole.. you gotta be fast and you gotta have a fast shutter speed… I was already shooting wide open (f2.8) at ISO3200, but my shutter speed was around 1/80-1/125. Not near fast enough, especially since I had to use my 80-200 most of the night.. With the 80-200 you need to be around 1/200 + to be sharp.

What to do.. My solution.. Since I always shoot RAW I figured I could get away with being 1.5-2 stops under exposed and adjust in post.  So I shot ISO3200, F2.8, 1/200 almost all night. As you can see, it did kinda work. I did loose a lot of my dark’s, but between the heavy backlight and underexposure there wasn’t much I could do about that. It’s about getting the image, right?

Comments & Feedback?

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