Category Archives: Cover Bands

The Party Animals at Beaches

April 12, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

The Party Animals are an incredibly talented covers band; everyone in the band are brilliant players and vocalists.

They made the old songs sound better than the originals; and their drummer is a full energy force, with the guitar players’ solos making my head spin around.

Definitely one of the best Cover Bands I have ever seen.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed at the following Link:

Flickr Photo Gallery of “The Party Animals” at Beaches

EQUIPMENT:
Sony Alpha-A77 Camera
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 Lens
Yongnuo Speedlite YN-460 II

Adobe Photoshop CS5.5

This was my first ever shoot of a band using a Speedlite Flash Unit. I was also required to do candid “party people” shots for the venue; and used a standard slip on rectangular diffuser on the flash unit, and pointed it up at 45 degrees most of the time.

The Yongnuo is a basic $50 flash from China, but has very simple controls with a 1 to 7 power dial on the back and that’s it! Most of the time I was only using level 1 to 3 power, and in the Sony rear playback screen the shots looked fine. However when downloaded to the PC, the shots were all dull and around one f-stop lower, so next time I will go brighter.

The charge time on the Yongnuo was okay, and provided it lasts a while I reckon it is a bargain compared to the proper $500 Sony Unit for the A-77.

The tricky thing is that at ISO400, it is pitch black in the viewfinder, and so composing shots and trying to get a spot focus was entirely blind guesswork. However when the flash fired, the camera seemed to cope reasonably well with exposure and focus.

Unfortunately it appears that Sony Cameras have their own unique flash hotshoe mount. And although Yongnuo make a flash for the Sony which fits the mount, Sony cameras do not recognise the flash, and so the Sony viewfinder does not brighten up like it does when the inbulit sony flash is popped up. Found this out by watching a YouTube video. So looks like I will be shooting blind until I can afford a proper Sony brand flash. 🙁

For both the band and people shots I used auto white balance, and “S” shutter priority. Band shots were at ISO 400 to ISO 1600, and 1/60, 1/80, and 1/120 shutter speed.

People shots were ISO 400, and shutter speed 1/125 in shutter priority “S” mode. This was my first time doing people shots of an age 30 plus crowd, and there was a lot of photoshopping needed to remove wrinkles and sunspots. The rubber stamp ran parallel to forehead wrinkles works a treat and all the ladies look at least 10 years younger? There were also a lot of exposure adjustments to do.

The people shots had a lot of white patches on faces (is that flash reflection in their facial sweat from dancing? How do you deal with this “snow on the face” effectively is something I need to figure out.

Cover Bands

Takin Cover at PBH Day

April 11, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Takin Cover are a solid rocking covers band who play a wide variety of hit songs form the 70’s 80’s and 90’s.

Robyn and Corey share vocal duties, with Corey also playing guitar and keyboards. The Rythm section is handled by Cam on Bass and Geoff on Drums. Paul covers Lead Guitar and backing vocals.

The following photos were taken at the Peninsula Band Host afternoon at Beaches of Mornington early in 2014.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed at the following Link:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Takin Cover at PBH Day

Further information about Takin Cover can be found at their Website and Facebook Page:

Takin Cover Band Website

Takin Cover Facebook Page

EQUIPMENT:

Panasonic Lumix LX7 low light camera.

The super little Lumix LX7 camera excelled in these near daylight conditions, and the photos required little photo-shopping before posting to the Web.

Cover Bands

Fudge at Beaches

April 8, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Fudge Band are a three piece who combine with professionally
sequenced drums, bass and keyboards to produce a full band.

With Jordan on Vocals and Scotty and Cam on Guitar and backing Vocals, the band plays a great mixture of covers.

They played to a packed house at Beaches of Mornington on Friday April 4th, and really got the crowd rocking.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed at the link below:

Flickr Gallery of Photos of Fudge at Beaches

Further information about the Fudge band can be found at their Website:

http://www.fudgelive.com/

We went along and saw Fudge two weeks later for another shoot; this time using two different lenses, and a Yongnuo Flash.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed at the link below:

Flickr Gallery of Photos of Fudge at Beaches on Anzac Day

EQUIPMENT – First Shoot:

Sony Alpha A-77
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8
A-77 on board flash.

Beaches has dim colored lighting and the camera struggled even at 3200 ISO and F2.8 Aperture.

This was not helped by having the camera incorrectly set up with “DRO” – Dynamic Range Optimisation, which balances exposure levels throughout the entire image, and made silouetted crowds in the foreground a horrible brown color instead of black. This was my first gig shoot with the A-77 and so there is still much learning to be done!

EQUIPMENT – Anzac Day Shoot:

Sony Alpha A-77
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8
Sony 35mm F1.8 Portrait Lens
Yongnuo YN460 Flash

In this shoot I followed the general approach I am currently using for shoots at Beaches. Step 1 is to get some low light no flash band pictures using the 35mm F1.8 fixed lens. About 1 in 6 of these shots work out, but I use the good ones in the middle of the final photo album to break things up a bit. Step 2 is to attach the flash and diffuser and do some more band shots, as well as “Party People” shots of venue patrons for the Beaches Facebook page.

Most band shots were taken at ISO 1000, with shutter fixed at 1/125th. Party People shots were taken at ISO 1250, with aperture priority used, so that aperture of 4.5 or 5.0 could be used for group shots to try and get everyone in focus.

Another thing I tried out was to take some shots of the Dance Floor, with no flash, and at ISO 5000. One shot was usable, but the A-77 is very noisy at these high ISO’s. I am going to continue getting a few really high ISO shots, as they are good to use as the final photos in an album.

Overall I was quite happy with this second shoot, and the results were definitely better than the first shoot two weeks prior.

In addition, some of the patrons were overwhelmed with happiness at their photos being taken; and insisted on having this shot, (which they posed, not me), with the very handsome photographer!

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Enjoy,
Passy