Clwbing It

On Saturday we went to Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff to watch Supergene. One of the band members who plays guitar works with my wife which is how we came to here of them. It was put to me that I might want to come along and take some photos. Since I knew it would be an interesting experience I brought my D70s along equipped with the 50mm 1.8; I knew I would need this for this kind of lowlight work.

Luckily there was just enough space around the edge of the stage to make shooting there comfortable. I took a few opportunities to go right to the front and try to get some nice shots. Knowing that I was at a disadvantage with my lack of equipment and the problems that the impending use of a high iso would cause I decided to not go for the 'traditional style' shots, basically portraits of each of the band members playing. Instead I decided to go more 'artsy' purposefully cropping out bits that would normally be included to try and direct the viewer away from the faces of the musicians.

The problems I had to tackle in this situation basically all stemmed from the fact that the venue would be dark, this in turn would mean that I would need longer shutter speeds. By boosting the iso I could get a few stops extra to play with but I didn't want to go higher than 800 as the D70 tends to run into serious noise problems at this point. After boosting the iso and opening up the aperture I still found myself needing around 1/10th of a second shutter speed; this is far too slow to freeze movement and even awkward to get sharp photos without camera shake. All of these factors added together, coupled with my lack of experience in this area of photography left me slightly disappointed with my results. The lack of focus and blur from movements, both from the camera and the band members have made for some 'interesting' shots, but nothing that I would be really proud of.

I think that I'll just put this one down to experience and next time I may just resolve myself to getting some really fast film and using my Olympus Om2; something that I would really like to try anyway.

Here are the rest of the photos from the shoot.

Durdle Door, Velvia and the RB

Last weekend while visiting Maria's mum in Bournemouth we decided to go for a short jaunt down to Lulworth Cove with the intention of watching the sunset down on the beach where Durdle Door can be found. Durdle Door itself is a giant rocky arch created by the erosion of the sea. It's a very impressive structure that is well worth a visit.

I wasn't overly happy with the digital shots that I managed to get during the sunset, I think due to the fact that the lowest iso available on the D70s being 200, however, when I received the Velvia transparencies from the lab that I had taken with the RB67 I was very happy, especially with the shot shown above. It has made me consider whether I should stop shooting landscapes with the digital altogether and just stick to the RB for things like that, the results I get are just far more satisfying and this is only from scanning the negatives/transparencies. I am going to get the shot above printed nice and big to see what it looks like printed professionally; I am hoping it will look even better than the scan.

I have been told that the reason for the colours seen in the photo is down to the fact that Velvia is optimised for the colour temperature of the midday sun. Since the light at this time is more yellow/orange (tungsten like) the colours have come out with a nice purple/magenta colour cast, which in this case looks very nice. If I wanted to get more 'realistic' colours Fuji 64T slide film has been recommended to me. This film is designed for use under tungsten lighting and will therefore produce more accurate colours.

Here is a link to the gallery on my website with a few other shots from that night.