Another bank holiday has passed us by and I got the opportunity to give my camera a rare outing.
A local band, “Kellys Heros” was playing in the East Kent Pub, just round the corner from where I am now living, So I figure this would be an ideal excuse to remind myself of just how dreadful my low light photography skills are.
I took my camera along with Flash unit down to the pub and quickly discovered a number of things:
- Pub band lighting is terrible
- Flash guns are an annoying intrusion for the band, the punters and the pub staff.
- The balance of working in low light, without a flash means that If you want to capture the band bouncing around the stage, then you are going to have to expect noise (High ISO) and poor colour reproduction.
The end result of the above is that my weekend project as resulted in a set of high contrast, grainy black and white photos. Thankfully I quite like the effect. but it would be nice to occasionally take photos of a band in colour.
So how do I improve for the future? The options are:
- Buy faster glass (side angle lens with low aperture), which I can’t afford
- Buy a full frame body which has better low light handling. If someone would like to buy me the new Sony A7r or A7s Cameras that would be lovely, thank you.
- Learn how to use a flash without upsetting everyone, or getting self conscious / embarrassed.
I will be buying a loto ticket this weekend and when I fail to win again, I’ll probably get the camera out and continue to practice.. Until I either get it right, or get lucky!
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