How to photograph a show - stills

[stanwax]

I had mixed results at a trance night recently. The flash photos showed no laser at all. The non flash showed laser beams but both the laser beams and the people were horribly blurred - obviously a slow shutter speed.

Having the people blurred is not an issue and something you wont get away with as you need to use longish exposures. If the exposure is too short you will only capture part of the scan. If you have any sort of manual control of shutter speed try around 1/10 - 1/30 sec. Much slower than this and you will need a steady hand or tripod.

To get a good laser shot with people properly lit need a bit of trickery - normally done with a long exposure to ensure the lasers are captured and manually firing a flashgun to illuminate the crowd. Tricky but possible.

See my self portrait here http://www.stanwax.plus.com/laser/selfp2.jpg- not brilliant but the same idea. I was kneeling on the floor and was holding a flash gun that I manually triggered (whislt pointing it at a white cupboard to my right to reflect the light)

Rob

[thesk8nmidget]

rob your link is bad


here it is fixed
http://www.stanwax.plus.com/laser/selfp2.jpg

[Anthony]

you could do the same with the onboard flash (and most ext flashed)
Use de 2nd curtain flash mode
I have a DSLR, i don't know if the smaller compacts have 2nd curtain flash.

Using High ISO to photograph lasershows is an option... but only with a good DSLR or the prosumer compacts.
Compacts have very bad lowlight noise when using high iso.

Canon digital rebels do good in lowlight situations (the new nikon d300 and d3 also...but are expensive).

The best option is a sturdy tripod and a cable trigger, using longer exposures.

[White-Light]

Good news, I just checked my cameras pre-set modes. I have a "Night Scene Portrait" mode. Basically this sets a long shutter then follows it with a red eye reduction flash - effectively its like 2nd sync. An experiment in my room in total darkness targeting the LED on my hifi showed a burnt in LED image (good sign it should record the laser) followed my a perfectly exposed HiFi unit, indicating that people should be frozen and illuminated perfectly also. Great result!

[platinum]

Another method of keeping the camera really steady is setting it to an auto-timer. (10 seconds or so) Set the camera somewhere where it has a good shot and hit the trigger. You could even run and get in the picture this way, if you wanted.

The only thing that would make this a difficult method would be vibrations from speakers nearby etc.

[Dr Laser]

One word....monopod!

[White-Light]

Another method of keeping the camera really steady is setting it to an auto-timer. (10 seconds or so) Set the camera somewhere where it has a good shot and hit the trigger. You could even run and get in the picture this way, if you wanted.

The only thing that would make this a difficult method would be vibrations from speakers nearby etc.

I suppose as well with DMX or ILDA and your own show you can cheat by putting a static beam pattern up and then taking the photo whilst its frozen.

Some great suggestions though guys. I'm going to give the 2nd sync shutter a go though as taking a monopod / tripod into a club isn't going to be possible. Great ideas for at home though - I have a good tripod so could set up a static beam from my laser when I get it.

[Renegade Lumen]

I'm actually a club photographer among other things. In fact I joined here because as an engineer I often build or devise my own lighting for my studio work, and this seemed like a good place to pick up stuff.

My club stuff: http://www.frantic-sa.co.za/gallery.html
My studio stuff: http://www.modelbase.co.za/1423

The trick with shooting club lighting is that your flash comes second - you first need to set your sensitivity (ISO) high enough to pick up the laser clearly over whatever time you can hold the camera steady... for me that's about 1/50th of a second. So, set your aperture to be as wide as possible (F2.8 is about the lowest a decent "club" lens or consumer point-and-shoot will do), then set the shutter to your steady speed (1/50th) in my case, and then bump up your ISO till the laser is clear... note that the higher your ISO, the more noise you will have... it's important to use a good SLR camera with a lens that supports a wide aperture, that way you can stay under ISO400.

As far as having lasers and people in the same shot goes, you need to use your flash to freeze the motion of your subject, and "fill-in". Your problem with the flash swamping the laser is either due to the flash picking up smoke and haze or that your camera defaults to too short an exposure when the flash is on. With the flash freezing your subjects you can shoot up to 1.5s exposures hand-held, but the focus of that is not really your lights, but rather a flavour of club/event photography peculiar to night-club events and things...

Anyway, hope that helps.

[buffo]

Welcome, Renegade Lumen!

As first posts go, yours was more informative than most. Thanks for taking the time to help out.

Well done.

Adam

[allthatwhichis]

I second Adam's statement; Wlcome Renegade Lumen. That is a good first post.

Something else to think about if you want to get good shots of beam shows. While watching the who, pause the show on the frame you want to shot and then take your picture. If you just open the frame in your editor, it may not look the same as it doesn't have the effct on it that it does in the show. Not that is won't look cool also, but I end up wanting to have pictures of moments in the show.