REVEREND HORTON HEAT
I am a huge fan of rockabilly music and a fan of Reverend Horton Heat. With one of the few venues in San Diego that sometimes do allow cameras in I was really hoping to get some great shots of the band and to try out the 50mm lens which I had been told was such a great lens for shooting bands without a flash.
I’d like to say I learnt something from this exercise but unfortunately it was a failed attempt.
I went in with some suggested settings to capture the great shots but after snapping 40 or so photos of the opening act, Luis And The Wildfires, I was just not having any luck and all my photos were looking like the photos I get with a bottom range digital “happy snap” camera.
So I switched to AUTO mode and started getting some great shots. At the end of the day, I feel, that if you get the shot, it doesn’t matter how you got it. But it feels like I’m cheating and not in control of my camera, and I don’t like that.
Sony Alpha 700, Sony 50mm f/1.8, 50mm, f/2.4, 1/125, ISO 200
There’s something about the photo above that I like. The lighting behind the Reverend Horton Heat, the microphone coming in from the left and the blur of the person’s head in front of me, as well as the Reverend’s characteristic cowboy hat in the background. It might not be photographically correct, but I like the moment I caught.
Sony Alpha 700, Sony 50mm f/1.8, 50mm, f/2.0, 1/90, ISO 200
I feel bad posting this photo up, as my good friend Brendan has just posted a humorous post on his blog about taking a bad photo, adding a vintage effect and slapping on some text in Helvetica. With the exception of the Helvetica I always feel bad adding the “vintage” effect, but after cropping this photo, chroming it and adding the effect in Photo Tools I really liked the mood of this photo of Jimbo from Reverend Horton Heat.
So not a very successful shoot but at the end of the day I got some great photos of one of my favorite bands with the very least, some good memories.
pretty cool! i like it.
nothing wrong with using auto. there is a lot of clever people working very hard to make that camera great, so why not use it.
In my earlier tips, should have mentioned aperture priority (AV on most cameras).
this allows you to set your aperture and the camera works out the shutter speed. this is the one i would use, because once you know there is enough light at f2.4 for example, then you know it will give you a fast enough shutter to freeze it.
I use this setting quite a lot.
Think of it as a controlled auto.
I laughed when i found that vintage helvetica thing, but the truth is photoshop is the new darkroom, and you should use it to get what you want.
February 8, 2011 at 11:35 am