Stage Lighting

[photoguy54]

I take a lot of images of bands and musicians at a little club here. The stage is small and the lighting horrendous! As you can see, the red glow just wipes out everything else! The guy on the far left is out of that light. It's much worse than the pic actually shows due to some saturation editing. Short of pulling the light down and stomping on it, is there a way to help compensate for it in my setup? I also shoot mainly in jpeg format because I'm not yet familiar enough with raw to be comfortable with it. Would raw be easier to edit?

Thanks for your input!
​Jim

Date	May 17, 2013, 3:18:13 PM
Width	3696
Height	2448
File Size	475222
Camera	NIKON CORPORATION
Model	NIKON D5100
ISO	3200
Exposure	1/60 sec
Aperture	4.0
Focal Length	22mm
Flash Used	true
Orientation	1
White Balance	0
Metering Mode	5
Exposure Program	0
CCD Width	23.6
Exposure Bias	0.0
Date and Time (Original)	2013:05:17 22:18:13
Color Space	1
Bits Per Sample	8
Photometric Interpretation	2
Samples Per Pixel	3
X-Resolution	300.0
Y-Resolution	300.0
Resolution Unit	2
Software	Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.0 Windows
Date and Time	2013:05:18 12:25:05
YCbCr Positioning	2
Date and Time (Digitized)	2013:05:17 22:18:13
Compressed Bits Per Pixel	4.0
Max Aperture	3.9
Light Source	0
Sub Sec Time (Digitized)	30
Sensing Method	2
Custom Rendered	0
Exposure Mode	0
Digital Zoom Ratio	1.0
Focal Length (in 35mm film)	33
Scene Capture Type	0
Gain Control	2
Contrast	0
Saturation	0
Sharpness	0
Subject Distance Range	0
Interoperability Index	R98
Metadata Date	2013-05-18T12:25:05-04:00
Image Number	2552
Lens	18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6
Lens ID	154
Lens Information	180/10 550/10 35/10 56/10
Serial Number	3412883
Format	image/jpeg
Time Zone Offset	-4, -4
Time Zone Minutes	0, 0

 

[Rexer John]

Raw would definately help because you don't have a set white balance.
You can take a single photo, then make 2, 3 or 4 images that have different white balance settings so each section of the photo has a correct white balance, then blend the images back into one photo with great white balance all over, using something like photoshop.

The down side to this technique is it will take quite a lot of time which is fine to get a great final image, but no good of you have hundreds you want to balance.

You would probably also lose the feel of the scene if you went too far from the actual lighting to get a clinical image.

The red doesn't bother me at all but the green is horrid.

Is the woman an audience member trying to get in on the pic? She looks 'armless anyway.

 

[photoguy54]

LOL! She's the tip collector for the Dirty T Shirt Band, Rexer John! I'm going to play with the raw format some for sure! I generally shoot 100-200 images, though...thus the reason for the jpeg format! Thanks for the tip!

 

[Rexer John]

Don't be intimidated by raw, it's just a file that you can adjust and then convert the output to jpeg.
If you don't like the jpeg output you can go back to the raw file (your digital negative) make adjustments and grab another jpeg.

Raw has so many advantages over jpeg and there are lots of posts on it around the forum.
The two biggest advantages in your scenario are that you can chose white balance after the shoot and you can bring out dark areas much better as there is so much more info in the file.
You can even change the exposure by up to plus or minus 2 stops, although limiting to 1 stop either way will give best results.

Shoot raw, not because it's cool or clever, but because it works!

Try shooting indoors at night with white balance set (incorrectly) to sunlight.
Try to correct the jpeg first, then try with the raw file.
​See how good raw is?

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

RAW is the way to go. You don't have to correct all the way to make it look better. Some color makes it look more like the club scene. Just tweak it a little to get it more pleasing. I spent an hour this afternoon teaching my wife to edit her own pictures instead to putting them in a folder and sending them over the network and telling me to "Fix" them. My advice to her was "less is more" little corrections look better than over cooking them.

 

[photoguy54]

Thank you both for the advise! I will be experimenting with shooting in the raw today! ::what::