D300 f/2.8 high ISO shots: why so mediocre?

[compuwar]

You've clearly never shot a concert.

I wouldn't shoot RAW unless you're taking these photos for yourself, and if you don't need more than a few hundred shots. If you're shooting for a magazine or website, sometimes you'll get 500 shots in the 2 or 3 song limit some bands give photographers to shoot photos (a lot of small bands, or easy-going bands(?), let you shoot for the entire concert), and you need to hand them over the next morning. Shooting JPEG can actually turn out a lot better since the camera does a decent job with most of the basic settings.

500 raw shots isn't that big a deal, but if you need 500 shots in two songs to nail the shots, I'd say that you're really not photographing, you're taking pictures. 250 shots for say 3-4 minutes is excessive- that's more than a shot a second- spray and pray isn't an optimal photographic technique.

WB at a concert? I say "just shoot" and hope you get lucky. Sorry, but with the number of flashing lights and multipe colours hitting the stage, your WB and exposure will be thrown off sometimes. It doesn't matter what you do. Sorry. If you were going to take a photo when the lights were red, and then they suddenly turn yellow while you're taking the photo, the photo's WB will be too slow to catch up. You can sit and think about the WB, or you can just shoot lots and lots of photos and hope the WB catches up with the lights.

Auto-WB uses a sensor on the camera. The camera is often in different light than the stage. Setting WB for the stage is meant to give you a baseline for exposures on stage, not to take away the lighting's color cast. There's not really any "catching up" to do unless you're in the same lighting as the performers, in which case there's plenty of time for the WB engine on any modern camera to make its change- however if you shoot in raw, you don't have to worry about that, but it'd slow down the machine-gunning (which would probably help more than it'd hurt.)

Other than perhaps the focus on that one photo, I don't see anything wrong with the photos. I'd compose them differently, but other than that, the photo quality itself is OK. Well, there's the composition, and perhaps the cropping. I'd shoot a bit tighter sometimes just to mix things up, or crop it so it's like that.

IMO, the blown highlights are the worst technical part, they take the eyes away from the performers and instruments, and I'd start by dialing in some negative exposure compensation. Then the composition, which needs work- but I agree that tighter shots would have helped.

 

[ChrisA]

You've clearly never shot a concert.

I wouldn't shoot RAW unless you're taking these photos for yourself,......

WB at a concert? I say "just shoot" and hope you get lucky.

You contradict yourself. If you shoot RAW then you don't have to worry about WB unil later when you are at home. Yes "just shoot" is the way to go. Shooting RAW let's you postpone a lot of decisions. Late after you have selected the good shots you can WB only those few shots in Apeture or Photoshop. It will go quick because you ony have to do those few "keepers"

If you shoot JPG at the concert then you DO have to worry about WB, at the least you have to decide what the setting is even if you decide to leave it on "auto"