I went to my Granddaughter’s last band concert of her Grade School Years the other night. Of course she wanted me to bring my camera along so that I could photograph the concert, her and some of her friends.
The lighting was absolutely Terrible in the auditorium, the seating for the band was tight, some of the band was on a stage and it was next to impossible for a photographer to move around for better angles for the shot. But I tried my best and managed to get some pretty fair photos for my Granddaughter to keep and share.
Here is a photo I took with my Canon 70-200 mm. Lens from the back of the auditorium. I believe I had the lens set on 70 mm. so that I could get most of the band in the photo. The girl at the very back of the stage is a friend of my granddaughter:
Now, here is the same shot using the Canon 70-200 at the maximum telephoto:
I was pretty pleased with this photo, except for how the tint in the photo turned out. It is also a touch soft because I could only do hand held shots and I don’t have Image Stabilization on the lens.
Then I figured “Oh, what the heck! I’m going to try my Canon 400 mm. lens just to see what I can do with it under these tough conditions!” I pulled the “big gun” out of my camera bag and put it on the camera.
When I put the big lens on and picked it up to take a shot a guy behind me said “WOW! That’s a Huge lens! What size is it?” I told him what it was and that it was an F/4 without stabilization. He promptly told me “that there was absolutely No Way I would be able to use that lens inside the dark room and double no on hand holding the lens!”
I wish I would have asked him for his email address! I managed to pull out a pretty fair photo of the girl in the back of the band! It is a touch soft and the colors are a bit off, but all in all I am happy with the results and so is my Granddaughter.
Here is another photo of my Granddaughter’s girl friends that I really think turned out Great! It was taken with the 400 mm. lens and hand held.
She is such a pretty young Lady and very photogenic.
Last of all is the best photo that I could get of my Granddaughter. I had a tough angle to shoot and they had a spotlight shining directly on her face, so it isn’t the best photo in the world. I had to do a lot of photo editing to get out the background distractions and to bring the exposure levels down to a tolerable level.
I wish I could have done better on my Granddaughter’s photo, but there was No way to do any better.
Dick
