What am I doing wrong

lakeland

lakeland

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Apologies if this has been covered, I tried to do a search but could only find close up nightclub information and this is slightly difference due to moving targets and distance.

I'd like to post photos but they were taken at a school play so I can't.

Basically, the pictures were 'ok', but the students faces were washed out in comparison to the rest of the photo.

There were a number of spotlights being shone at the students and none had colour filters?

I was using a canon 550d and 18-55 kit + 50mm 1.8. The 50mm was giving better results but not by much. I was also finding that I couldn't get a slow enough shutter speed for the dancing act (singers/bands were fine). I did try the onboard flash but all it did was wash out the foreground, probably because I was a sat in the audience?

Any help would be great fully appreciated
 
O K. I will try to answer,but without pics it,s hard.
It's not my genre ,I like landscape but going from what you say,the 50mm will have a 1.8 aperture and let in more light,but focus will be critical wide open.

ISO will have to be bumped up as high as possible,and a monopod a great help.

If they are moving,at some point indoors they will have to stop or slow down,this is the best time to take low light shots.
on-board flash will light the heads of the parents but will be useless for distant subjects.
So, higher ISO,wider aperture,mono-pod.
Best of luck.
Now you have had one attempt at an answer,more experienced togs will jump i
PS
Use RAW mode as you can alter most colour casts.
 
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What settings were you using? It might help us understand better how to help you.
 
It sounds quite simple to me, the scene was predominantly dark with small areas of bright light.

Evaluative or matrix metering has ignored the small bright areas, and exposed the shot for the midtones.

The solution is to use a different metering method or exp comp to expose for the spot lit faces.

It's what you see all the time in camera phone pictures from gigs. You can rarely make out the face of the artist but the stage lighting looks great.
 
I'll certainly look in to a monopod, sounds like a good idea, same with shooting in raw as I have not ventured in to that world yet.

I was using priority mode and trying to keep the shutter speed above 1/20th. I also tried all of the metering modes, evaluative, partial, spot and centre weighted, centre weighted gave the best results.

The problem I had was the faces were washed out when the spotlights were on the performer and everywhere else was well exposed. If I went for less exposure I would only have caught the face correctly?

There is also not much control when using priority, how would I use manual settings in a fast paced performance because once I've dialled in settings the scene has gone
 
The thing is ,if you overexpose the highlights as in the faces you have a hell of a job to get them back. It's called blowing the highlights.
Indeed ,you mostly cannot rescue them, whereas with the shadows you have a good chance to rescue them,so expose for the faces with spot metering and just tweek the shadows in P&P after.The bodys will be dark,but better that than a white-out face.

DO NOT shoot in manual untill you are very comfortable doing so.
I would use A mode (aperture priority) as it will expose automatically for the aperture set.
But lighting indoors is really hard to work with.
 
Is there any particular reason why you feel you cannot post the images here?
 
You don't say how far away from the stage you are when you shoot. If you're quite a way back (enough to get the whole play in) I'm guessing that the camera is having to cope with a wide range of tones.
I think it's easier to understand why this happens when you realise that the human eye sees many more stops of light than your everyday DSLR. In short, the camera is always compromising the light on the stage to the light on the faces and vice versa. To reintroduce those stops of light that the eye sees but the camera doesn't I think you should shoot in RAW and look towards post production. At least then you can expose the faces correctly (to save them being blown out) and then lighten the stage (which should be darker than required now) to achieve the balance of light across the image that your'e looking for.
I don't see anything wrong in using software to help you recreate what you see infront of you if the camera can't see it as well.
 
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