GM1 does live theatre

Amateur production of "Death of a Salesman"

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Tom Caldwell

Those look fantastic, nice work!

That's the Panasonic 35-100 on there, right Tom?

Well done Tom!

Andrew

Wonderful photos Tom. As tiny as the GM1 is, it still kicks out the same image quality as any of the other current M43 bodies. Since it was an amateur production, you should offer to print copies for the cast members, I'm sure some of them would be thrilled.

Excellent photos.

Tom Caldwell said:

Amateur production of "Death of a Salesman"

--
Tom Caldwell

Click to expand...

Gees, you make tough lighting conditions look easy Tom. Nailed them as well. As you know I rely on sunshine and couldn't even imagine getting shots like these, impressive and at the larger views, excellent details and lowish noise levels. Between you and me Tom, I'm almost too scared to go over ISO 400 on APS-C or m4/3 ;-) I might just have to give that a crack.

All the best tom, excellent shots and work.

Danny.

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Birds, macro, motor sports.... http://www.birdsinaction.com
Flickr albums ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/124733969@N06/sets/
The need for speed ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/130646821@N03/

Nice work, Tom.

The level of detail and such is really good, but may I be slightly critical and suggest that the shots would have been so much better with some minor adjustments.

Picking up the shadows somewhat, for example, simply lift the shots immeasurably, without detracting from the overall mood.

Doing such brings out not just the actors, but the sets as well, as all of this bring together the entire stage production. The eye always sees more than the camera.

GV27 said:

That's the Panasonic 35-100 on there, right Tom?

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Yes I have been using some pretty fancy (large) Canon lenses for many years now and an aging Canon 5D. Maybe the Panasonic kit might not be up to the current level Canon dslr bodies but it is starting to give the 5D some reason to feel insecure.

The 35-100 is indeed a great lens. I had it out on a trot on another occasion over last weekend with the cheaper, slower, but very nice 45-175 but for some reason I found that the images I selected as "best" were all from the 35-100. Might be just coincidence in the opportunities.

nzmacro said:

Tom Caldwell said:

Amateur production of "Death of a Salesman"

--
Tom Caldwell

Click to expand...

Gees, you make tough lighting conditions look easy Tom. Nailed them as well. As you know I rely on sunshine and couldn't even imagine getting shots like these, impressive and at the larger views, excellent details and lowish noise levels. Between you and me Tom, I'm almost too scared to go over ISO 400 on APS-C or m4/3 ;-) I might just have to give that a crack.

All the best tom, excellent shots and work.

Danny.

--
Birds, macro, motor sports.... http://www.birdsinaction.com
Flickr albums ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/124733969@N06/sets/
The need for speed ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/130646821@N03/

Click to expand...

Thanks Danny'

They needed a bit of refinement out of the raw images. But it was not hard work. I am normally "jpg is ok if it is good enough" but these images did benefit from a little post processing help.

What I wanted to illustrate was that you don't need a big fancy body as the lens used is most important and that the lens on this occasion complemented the GM1 quite well.

When the chips are on the table I think that if I upgraded my now nine year old 5D for a more recent body the bigger gear might still take home the bacon. But tiny cameras and good lenses are getting closer and are now well within quite good enough.

No noise reduction was applied but I did use DR settings to bring out the shadow detail - which was obviously there and caught.

Stage lighting is everything in theatre work - good lighting makes it easier.

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Tom Caldwell

I copied the first photo and did a very quick levels change in PS and it does pick things up without increasing noise etc, at least in what I was able to download. Without the original files, it's difficult to know what can be done.

What a Canon 5D plus 400/2.8 can do on the same night








Deliberate conversion to B&W





All taken from the back row of the theatre to get stage height and angle (tiered seating).

--
Tom Caldwell

I have to say that I prefer the GM1 shots over the Canon any day.

I already picked up a lot of the shadow detail in post. Pushing it further risked increasing the noise level on the lit areas

I am staqgered that you underexpose by two stops, Tom.

For stage work I tend to overexpose by one. My limit is hit when I get a bit of highlight blinking.

I also always work in Manual. I did not notice what you were using.

The last show I did is:-


Tony

TonyGamble said:

I already picked up a lot of the shadow detail in post. Pushing it further risked increasing the noise level on the lit areas

I am staqgered that you underexpose by two stops, Tom.

For stage work I tend to overexpose by one. My limit is hit when I get a bit of highlight blinking.

I also always work in Manual. I did not notice what you were using.

The last show I did is:-

http://www.tonygamble.org/An_Ideal_H_Prod_Web/index.html

Tony

Click to expand...

Tony,

Good shots.

Whilst we are being critical.

The photographer of stage productions has to work within the constraints of the production itself and subject to the whims of the lighting in place. Your production was on a fairly evenly well lit stage. Over exposing a little has tended to blow away some of the highlights and your angle is low - an occupational hazard of having to shoot from below the stage. However you must have been on-stage for some of the shots. Shadows from directional lighting can be just as much a problem as over-exposure and dark surrounding areas.

The cast shots show the un-eveness of the lighting despite a generally well lit stage. This cannot be helped and is hard to get right without very high dynamic range or sandwiching several shots.

A few shots show the increased grain of the brighter exposure that I was trying to avoid.

In my situation in the images shown the stage was heavily directionally spotlit and maybe I could have thrown in some more exposure but I was trying to balance what actually could be seen with eyesight against throwing not-spotlit background into brightness where the stage settings were inapproriate to the particular instance of the play and were not meant to be highlighted. (I would argue that in truth the cast were not fully lit as is demonstrated by my images - to show otherwise would be to try and improve on the actual lighting that was used) - Therefore my submission was a deliberate act of balance. It is not completely appropriate to compare spotlit stage shots with full area even illumination.

I tend to shoot from deep in the theatre so that I can achieve stage height and not look up at my subjects. I have found on-stage too intrusive for the cast playing live and mostly "wrong-angle" as the stage is not deep enough. Shooting from the wings is for turkeys or special effects and a whole genre in itself and I quickly gave up on that.

I have other images from shows where the stage was fully and brightly lit where a wholly different technique is applied. I shoot AF as manual is not quick enough for my purposes as I am generally unaware of the evolving plot and I am shooting live production. I adjust my EV to suit the lighting/clothing available. I use spot metering but have to be careful to meter off skin or light clothing or the lighter parts of the image get blown away. I try to work to correct face lighting and tones.

More general area metering simply does not work reliably (for me), especially when picked out by spotlight as the dark areas throw the camera metering into spasms of sheer craziness.

I have been doing this for ten years and think I have it worked out to my personal taste - that it is not to the taste of others is fair comment.

I was not posting specifically for advice, nor was I particularly preening, just giving examples of what the GM1/35-100 combination can do and I have posted some (ancient 5D) examples made from the same show using a to-die-for Canon 400/2.8 for comparison purposes.

Others might use the same kit and make their own exposure decisions.

It is certainly very useful to see how others might tackle this little niche of photography exercise.

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Tom Caldwell

Awesome compositions. I know that the lens was used for each reach but I think it let's down the image quality once you look a little bit closer. Having said that, I bet they would make very decent prints of moderate size.