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.