Concert pictures - tips, editing (grainy)

Hello!

I have a bunch of questions rolled into 1 post. I'm the proud new owner of an H1. Took my first real set of pictures at a Bon Jovi concert tonight. I have to say - I'm absolutely AMAZED at what this camera can do! My experiences with photography have mostly been with my little 35mm Olympus (which I still love!) or regular zoom digitals. I am very, very new at this fine detail business (I've been reading the manual to find out what the camera settings and things like "iso" mean), but even in the hands of an amateur this camera was phenominal!

I read previous posts about what settings to use when taking pictures in a concert setting. Special thanks to bonobaltimore and Pixelated7 for their U2 concert pic posts. For my pictures, I used iso 400 and shutter priority mode, usuallly with a shutter speed of about 80-125. This seemed to work well for me. I didn't bother really with aperture, as I was unsure of what to do with it. What would generally be a good setting for a concert? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

While I am thrilled with my pictures, I noticed that they tended to be somewhat grainy. I have been experimenting with Corel Paint Shop (trial version), and am quite pleased with what I am able to do to edit the pictures. What I am unsure of though is whether I am applying the proper corrections to the photos. Could anybody give me some tips on how to edit grainy photos (ie/ what functions or corrections to apply)? Or even better, is there some way to avoid them by changing the settings on my camera?

Also, I am seriously considering getting Adobe photoshop to use for photo editing and general digital artwork. I am a student, and so I am able to get this for a very discounted price through school. I am so far happy with the Corel program, but Photoshop seems to be the top software for this. Am I right?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer! I look forward to reading more great posts on this forum!

Aly

Glad you got your H1 and trotted it out for something as ambitious as a concert.

What you're seeing, and calling "grain" is actually "noise" in digital cameras. It's caused by the sensor not getting enough photons on specific sites for them to decide which information they should record. Essentially, these are errors - not very different from film grain.

There is only one way to remove those errors and that is with Noise Reduction software.

There are three I recommend, and all three have a trial download:

Noise Ninja
Noiseware Professional (my favorite) and
Neat Image

Google them, download the trial versions and try it out on your pictures.

You will want to leave some grain so that your images do not become "plastic" looking and lose all their sharpness and detail. After you apply NR, you're going to want to apply a little sharpening to bring back some of the detail the NR smudges.

As for settings, may I recommend the H1 White Paper. It's got tons of information about how to set your camera, how to use manual modes, focusing, etc.

It's at: http://www.aakatz.com/h1whitepaper

Hope this helps...
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AAK - http://www.aakatz.com

come on, don't leave us hanging, haha. Post some of your shots if you can

MJ

Thanks AAK for your advice!!

I only have the pictures saved on my computer for now. I guess to post them here I have to upload them somewhere, which I've never done before. Any suggestions as to what site too use?

Try http://photobucket.com/

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http://iwansala.blogspot.com/
http://iwansala.zoto.com/galleries

Hello again!

I uploaded 4 pictures (for now). I apologize for the watermarks, however I also would like to post these on a fan site and not have to worry about anybody stealing them (this has happened to other fans, whose pictures ended up being sold on ebay).

The first 3 are some of my good ones, which have also been edited a bit (for noise and brightness). The 4th one is an example of one of the more "grainy" shots I got, and the 5th one is to show you one that turned out a bit dark.

I know they're a bit big, but when I tried to resize them I found that the quality wasn't as good. How can I resize pictures without losing quality?

I'd appreciate any feedback and comments!!

Aly

Hmm, some noise in a few but I think they are pretty good I'm totally itching to get to a concert and shoot some pix with my H1, but there are no "Real" shows here in my town. I'll have to wait until summer, haha.

MJ