redfishingboat

Local hipsters Castledoor met Brooklyn rockers Hopewell at Spaceland on June 8th. I was there shooting for LAist.com. Jeremy Oberstein was there to write about it. See the feature just posted over at LAist.com.

Hopewell, Castledoor @ Spaceland, 6/07/09 on LAist.com

I had major troubles with the lighting. I’m not at all happy with the lack of truly sharp frames from this show. I carried with me the 50mm f/1.4, the 85mm f/1.8 and the 15mm fisheye. I left the 24-105 f/4L at home. I learned more lessons — but I’ve also found more confusions. I tried to use the ST-E2 IR transmitter without a flash, trying to get help from the auto-focus assist beam it has. Results were mixed. I got things close to being in focus, but it was very slow. There is a beat pause after you press the focus button to when the beam goes out. This is not great when people are moving around. Still, I took plenty of frames when the singer was at the mic, and still I found a lack of sharpness. Was it the extreme aperture of my lenses? I tend to think so, but I have good examples of sharp focus from at least f/1.6 with that 50mm before. So what was the issue? When Hopewell was on the stage, they asked to turn the lights down. Damn them! So there was one white light off to the side that I had to work with. I should have gotten some sharply focused frames, but it feels like I didn’t. Was it camera shake? I used to think 1/160th of a second was the slowest I could go. Now I think 1/200 is the absolute slowest I should go. When Castledoor was on the stage, the lights were just red and blue the whole time. I am sure the red makes it hard for a red autofocus beam to operate.

Should I go with my own flash? Probably. I try to avoid it, but maybe I could try it for a few shots. We’ll see. If I shoot Spaceland again, I will definitely bring a flash on a bracket or something.

And, I’ll buy a 16-35 f/2.8L. Maybe.

Hopewell on Myspace
Castledoor on Myspace

P.s. I was extra disappointed with my photographic results, when I discovered that Castledoor’s keyboardist is a stunning photographer in her own right. I should at least take better pictures than the band!