Share your bad photography job experiences/F#$% Ups.

[Power47]

Originally Posted by Shortass_Jr

u were a little tired hahaha the problem is i ask a lot and you were much to tired hahaha how did they turn out mate?

dont know, havent looked, iv more important things to worry about right now, like getting some sleep...

2 weddings, 1 motorsport event and about 12,000kms to travel this weekend... im sure ill have a story to add to this thread by mid next week.

[Dropbear]

Lost my sunglasses on my photography holiday last week, bending over taking flower macros... sigh

I loved those sunglasses

And just about ruined an entire shoot with one of my favourite models because the IS was set to mode 2 instead of mode 1, and a lot of the shots came out blurry as shit .. rescued some with black and white, and some I fluked ;(

[Statitica]

Originally Posted by Power47

had a wedding on the weekend, i didnt drink enough red bull, it was a disaster.

Quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in a while.

[Sir.Eos]

Haha, sounds like a painful club experience there Moda. Although i am going to disagree with you somewhat on the UWA comment, if I had the space I wouldn't point a lens any wider than 50mm towards a person. However working in crowded bars I have come to love my 10-20mm, and I know other social photographers who use 16mm on FF to capture 90% of their socials. I now use an 8mm fisheye to capture most of the socials I shoot.

[Modafroman]

Originally Posted by Sir.Eos

Haha, sounds like a painful club experience there Moda. Although i am going to disagree with you somewhat on the UWA comment, if I had the space I wouldn't point a lens any wider than 50mm towards a person. However working in crowded bars I have come to love my 10-20mm, and I know other social photographers who use 16mm on FF to capture 90% of their socials. I now use an 8mm fisheye to capture most of the socials I shoot.

Yea it wasn't good. So embarrassing! Lesson learnt tho Now that i've got a lens that can actually focus, and a proper flash with af assist, its fine. It's fun too, tho it does confirm my utter hatred of drunk people over and over again

Yea I dunno, I guess its fine when people are right in the middle of the frame, tho their noses still look really big lol, just peoples faces look bad when towards the edge where everything gets distorted. I tend to shoot in the ~17-30mm range i'm guessing, probably mostly around ~20-25mm or so *shrugs*

[Pinkeh]

Originally Posted by Modafroman

I guess I could share my first experience with club photography. First gig, didn't have a proper flash, so I was using a manual flash (YN460, on the 550D + 17-50mm tamron).

What could go wrong, did go wrong. The tamron couldn't focus because of the lack of light and it being totally useless, and because the flash didn't have an AF assist beam.... so I would stand there mashing the shutter button trying to get it to focus, meanwhile the people were just going who the fuck is this guy. Eventually gave up and tried using manual focus, which didn't work due to no light, and the flash wouldn't fire on liveview for some reason. Eventually gave up that on account of the tamron being fucking useless and used a 10-22mm, which is what I used to get 90% of the usable shots. a UWA lens is horrible for people shots btw, utterly useless distortion. and then the batteries died and the spare batteries I bought wouldn't work.

Out of 200 shots taken that night, 50 were usable, and of those 50 most were badly framed due to me being frustrated, or had face stretchingness from the wideangle.

good times right?

Proper gear makes shit go boom now

the 17-50mm tamron cant take night shots? O_O

I love my 10-20mm sigma, its awesome for creative landscape shots when you're not concerned about distortion

[Modafroman]

Originally Posted by Pinkeh

the 17-50mm tamron cant take night shots? what's the point of it then? O_O

No it can, the AF system on the Tamron is just really bloody useless, especially in low light situations. In general its fine in daylight apart from the usual noisy and slow focus as noted everywhere, but once you get indoors/low light, it hunts and just can't lock on focus, and on chance it does, 99% of the time its nowhere near. Having a flash with AF assist would have definitely helped, but I used it with a 580ex ii and it was still pretty slow to lock on. In comparison, the Sigma is worlds apart, so much quicker and quieter and much more accurate and actually usable in low light. Having said that tho, night shots are more often then not either manually focused or focused at infinity/hyperfocal, so yea For the 3-5 months or however long I had the tamron for, it was fine in most other situations, that was just the turning point of me deciding to ditch it

[compuser]

Moda, out of interest are you shooting with your 50/1.8, 17-50/2.8 or still 10-20 for your club shots?

EDIT: Im assuming 17-50 from your previous post

[Modafroman]

Originally Posted by compuser

Moda, out of interest are you shooting with your 50/1.8, 17-50/2.8 or still 10-20 for your club shots?

EDIT: Im assuming 17-50 from your previous post

Yep, 17-50mm. Both me and my mate are. The 50mm would be way too long for clubs.

The majority are using 17-50mms as well as 10-20mm/10-22mm and 24-70/24-105mm... can't think of what else others are using but yea.

[Sir.Eos]

Other lenses that club photographers would use:

16-35mm/17-40mm on FF camera
or a 15mm Fisheye on FF or 8mm Fisheye on Crop.

To put it simply anything wider than 30-25mm and you're there.

[Modafroman]

Originally Posted by Sir.Eos

Other lenses that club photographers would use:

16-35mm/17-40mm on FF camera
or a 15mm Fisheye on FF or 8mm Fisheye on Crop.

To put it simply anything wider than 30-25mm and you're there.

Yea, that. The guys on FF are using those ~16-35/17-40mms and the 24-xx mm range lenses. To tell you the truth tho, most of the guys running around the place are on crop, just because its mostly young guys, first gig and what not. Even the owner of GANL is using a 7D

[switchblade327]

Originally Posted by Modafroman

Yea, that. The guys on FF are using those ~16-35/17-40mms and the 24-xx mm range lenses. To tell you the truth tho, most of the guys running around the place are on crop, just because its mostly young guys, first gig and what not. Even the owner of GANL is using a 7D

Dumb Q: do you shoot M or A/T priority? Do you try bring out any of the back ground or is the trick (as I note in most of the social pages) to highlight the subjects and screw the background?

[Modafroman]

Originally Posted by switchblade327

Dumb Q: do you shoot M or A/T priority? Do you try bring out any of the back ground or is the trick (as I note in most of the social pages) to highlight the subjects and screw the background?

Getting slightly OT but meh. Shooting in manual. Usually ~1/10th to ~1/30th (I try to shoot a bit faster, my mate really drags the shutter lol) @ f5-6.3, iso400-640 ish. Flash set to around ~+1 to 1.5 FEC with an omnibounce modifier and the head at varying angles. It all Depends on the lighting. It's one of those things where you just set it and forget it. As for the background, I try and get as much ambient light in, it gives them a bit more depth/realism, but try and isolate the subjects as much as possible, but tbh thats as far as it goes, drunk people don't care if theres some random person in the background or whatever

[TomJ]

Originally Posted by NismoR31

www.inthemix.com.au
sign up and request to be a contributor. There'll be stacks of club nights needing photographers. You won't get paid but you do get free entry (obviously) & can build your reputation & portfolio. If you shoot a regular gig I know of many who've been then employed by the venue to shoot all their nights

Done and Done. I sent an email to the 'Contributor Team'

Originally Posted by Modafroman

This. Also get in contact with the getanightlife guys (I do a bit of work with them, one of my mates has just started becoming one of their rising stars haha, he gets quite a lot of side gigs), or the Perth equiv.

and Done. They appear to support Perth events too.

[switchblade327]

Originally Posted by Modafroman

Getting slightly OT but meh. Shooting in manual. Usually ~1/10th to ~1/30th (I try to shoot a bit faster, my mate really drags the shutter lol) @ f5-6.3, iso400-640 ish. Flash set to around ~+1 to 1.5 FEC with an omnibounce modifier and the head at varying angles. It all Depends on the lighting. It's one of those things where you just set it and forget it. As for the background, I try and get as much ambient light in, it gives them a bit more depth/realism, but try and isolate the subjects as much as possible, but tbh thats as far as it goes, drunk people don't care if theres some random person in the background or whatever

Yeah a little OT but just wanted to compare notes as I've gone mostly to manual and realized many ways to skin a cat. Thanks for that

Btw it's about where I would shoot people in darker environments though I tend to use less flash and bump this ISO up