Just for Fun No C&C will be given: More Progress in Shooting in Available Stage Light!

[Asher Kelman]

I have settled on using the 5DII with generally about a stop of under-exposure to protect the highlights and not have hands and faces vanish in the bright overhead lights. My hope has been to use a digicam and avoid the shutter noise of the DSLR.

The Colburn School of Music Conservatory trains a diverse array of students since they always have one orchestra's worth of musicians. When some graduate, others vie to take their place. Graduates tend to become soloists or else get prestigious appointments in major orchestras.

Thursday at 11 am is the time when one gets a glimpse of the work of individual students or ensembles they have put together. Different students, each bring a certain character to the school.

These first images will illustrate the introduction and then I'll try to show results with the new GXR camera as well as the Canon G10. These last two cameras are especially interesting since they are essentially silent with the synthesized shutter sound turned off.

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Percussion: Here are two talented musicians. They are versatile and have a repertoire that spans classical music to South American modern music and jazz. The student in the front also plays as poetical solos with words he sings.

Here he is just the right side of the percussion quartet in the dark right side of the stage! So there's an extra challenge.

Asher Kelman Percussion Quartet, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 7.1, 1/125 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 170mm
​

So here, the issue was low light mostly and the arms of the drummers were a tad over lit on the top but manageable. So this is our 5DII baseline. Of course, there's great resolution, but can such images be obtained with digicams, sufficient for web and publication use?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Piano: Unusually, it was possible to take the pictures with under exposure and get very good face illumination. The lighting technicians are outside contractors and when and why they change lighting is a mystery. We are trying to get a handle on this and communicate with them. anyway, here they lit just the center of the stage, it seems and it worked. It could be that the position of the piano and pianist is just the sweet spot of their general lighting pattern and having musicians elsewhere would give us more of the burnout problem again.

The Piano students each have their own presentation. Here there's one student who is lyrical in her movements, like a dancer in a romance with some special space around the keyboard.

Asher Kelman Percussion Quartet, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 5.6, 1/200 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 125mm

Asher Kelman Piano, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 5.6, 1/200 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 195mm​

Now here's a pianist who's style is elegant and restrained but commanding and beautiful too

Asher Kelman Piano, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 4.5, 1/195 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 125 mm​

Asher



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[Asher Kelman]

Unlike the piano soloists, here's an example of where a number of musicians are spread out over the stage. So one has to deal with harsh light from above as well as the musicians in the sides of the stage playing in dim light.

Woodwind: Shadows are rather harsh and then light intensity fades to both extreme sides of the stage too. Still, one can work within these limitations by using the shadow highlight tool on a separate layer in Photoshop and then masking those areas to be seen from the original and corrected layer. It becomes routine 2cd nature, but where the person is in low light compared to the whole picture, the quality is damaged, of course.

The center of the orchestra is the woodwind. The oboe provides the key note from which the orchestra is tuned and one instrument can raise its voice above all the strings. It modulates that sound of the brass when played alongside them and can talk back and forth to many instruments. I am fascinated how composers use woodwinds to give a human feeling to the voice of the orchestra.

Here's the woodwind quintet

Asher Kelman Percussion Quartet, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 5.6, 1/200 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 130mm

Asher Kelman Percussion Quartet, Canon 5D II, ISO 2500, f 5.6, 1/200 sec, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 100mm​

 

[Asher Kelman]

Comments welcome!

More pictures to follow! Please return over the holidays!

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Comments welcome!

Hi Asher,

I'm enjoying the series. It's nice to see (to bad we cannot hear) these young talented people in action. You seem to have a decent enough grip on the exposure difficulties of such harshly lit scenes, well done.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Asher,

I'm enjoying the series. It's nice to see (to bad we cannot hear) these young talented people in action. You seem to have a decent enough grip on the exposure difficulties of such harshly lit scenes, well done.

Bart,

Thanks so much for your advice and encouragement! I'm amazed how the pianists came out so well with just RAW conversion. They are in center stage, young and Asian with softly contoured faces and so are beautifully rendered. A European 50 year old, with characteristically strong projecting features, wrinkles and spectacles would have not fare so well. The shadows of the overhead light just ruin the imaging of a lot such perfectly attractive and handsome folk! This means hours of photoshopping! Uggh! It seems like anywhere but that sweet center spot is harsh. However, the exact changes the lighting techs make is utterly obscure. I'm trying to get a handle on that and have some input into the illumination plan. At present, the only thing that's obvious to an alert viewer is that the periphery of the stage is poorly lit and dim. I'm sure 99% of folk just don't notice that as the music is perfect. In movies, whenever the lighting is odd but the action and sound is engaging and stellar, the audience feels no loss in experience. In fact with half the screen dark in a scene, they believe this effect is part of the mood of the film.

If however, the sound crackles and pops, folk would walk out the theater. So it's not surprising that poor lighting is so easily gotten away with. In any case, I now feel that this is something we can now address as the school recognizes this and wants the lighting to match the quality of the performance.

Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

I love these. I've done a great deal of shooting with available light, both for dance recitals and community theatre. It's a challenge but sometimes stage lighting can be wonderful.

 

[Ruben Alfu]

Hi Asher, these photos are very well done. I think they´ll look great, for example, in a magazine or in the portfolio of these musicians. Looking at them dressed in black, with instruments full of metal or polished parts, standing under bright harsh light with a drastic fall off... I don´t know how worse it can get. It is very interesting to follow your progress dealing with these issues. I wonder if bracketing, for example when they are just standing in front of the audience, would be any practical or beneficial. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Asher, these photos are very well done. I think they´ll look great, for example, in a magazine or in the portfolio of these musicians. Looking at them dressed in black, with instruments full of metal or polished parts, standing under bright harsh light with a drastic fall off... I don´t know how worse it can get. It is very interesting to follow your progress dealing with these issues. I wonder if bracketing, for example when they are just standing in front of the audience, would be any practical or beneficial. Thanks for sharing.

Ruben,

Thanks for your feedback and ideas. It's a good point about bracketing. The problem is that the musicians never stay still. not for one moment, even when they think they are at rest! As the dynamic ranger of cameras improve and I get my input into lighting so the dynamic range of the scene is reduced, we'll do better. Ideally, the Fuji S5 would be a great option because it has the widest DR. I'll have to try it out. Otherwise the Nikon 3Ds is aboput a stop better than the 5DII, I believe, but I cannot chase one stop of EV with $10,500 of Nikon camera and lenses. As the 5DII can do as well as it has at ISO 2500 with under-exposure instead of using ISO 5,000, the 5DII is a good warrior for this work. Just improving the light distribution will already improve things greatly. I'm not sure how hight in lumens/m2 one can raise the lights and still have the musicians comfortable. I've a feeling that just evening out the light and having a greater percentage coming from the front would be a great help. The first part is the easiest. Having light come from the front, however, is something that one has to simply try and find out what's acceptable for the performers.

Asher

 

[Ruben Alfu]

Ruben,

Just improving the light distribution will already improve things greatly. I'm not sure how hight in lumens/m2 one can raise the lights and still have the musicians comfortable. I've a feeling that just evening out the light and having a greater percentage coming from the front would be a great help. The first part is the easiest. Having light come from the front, however, is something that one has to simply try and find out what's acceptable for the performers.

Asher

It seems to me that the main problem is when the lighting is designed for a soloist or small group and for some reason the performers spread out of this area. If that´s the case, what about a Speedlite flash system on stage (placed in stands behind curtains for example) that you could use at least in the middle of performances for this kind of situations?

 

[Asher Kelman]

It seems to me that the main problem is when the lighting is designed for a soloist or small group and for some reason the performers spread out of this area. If that´s the case, what about a Speedlite flash system on stage (placed in stands behind curtains for example) that you could use at least in the middle of performances for this kind of situations?

A great idea, Ruben,

However, the music performance has to be a fluid work not changed by anything except the musicians. A flash of light would certainly be objectionable. I've never heard of that being permitted anywhere for classical music.

It should be far easier to penetrate the occult codes of the lighting techs. That's my wish for 2010! If the light is continuous, then the only thing that changes is under control of the performers, as it should be. The thing to recognize is that the flaws in the lighting are missed by a lot of folks unless, for example, they see that their favorite musician is in the shadows. The human eye compensates for a lot of that and the joy of the music tricks the audience to letting "go by" major lighting issues. When the lighting is improved, I predict, I feel that the music itself might also appear to be better! That we'll have to wait to see!

Asher

 

[fahim mohammed]

Asher, all I can say is that you have increased my appreciation of the issues involved in stage lighting
and that you are pretty savvy in handling these tricky situations. Personally, the narration of the performers wants me to hear them play!

After all we take stage lighting for granted don't we? Just as the light of our sun..without thought about
its nuances, color, direction, when it occurs and where?

Await the next in the series.