Spring in the City 2008 @Vivocity 春城洋溢华夏情 - Fujifilm S6500fd

[Clockunder]

Camera : Fujifilm S6500fd

Total no. of pictures : 15

Mostly shot at ISO 400. Last 2 pictures shot at ISO 800.

Critiques are strongly welcome.

#1


#2


#3 Preparation of some kind of tea


#4


#5 Blowing a song with leaf

[Clockunder]

#6


#7


#8


#9


#10 A nice painting on display on the wall (was told later that "no photography please". Just like in the past years, the artists (not limited to painters) don't like others taking photos of their works.

[Clockunder]

#11 Art and Crafts on sale


#12 Performance at 7pm. Difficult to get good composition as the flashes of a few photographers in front are high up and blocking my view most of the time. Auto White balance also went hay-wire under low light condition.


#13




#14 Shot at ISO 800 .........light condition was bad.


#15 Shot at ISO 800 again.

[dancemania]

Looks like a colourful performance! Much better than the Liao Ning one I saw at Marina. Is it still on next week?

[smallaperture]

Thanks Clockunder for the interesting pictures - as usual the quality pic. Makes my right index finger itchy to go shooting leh. So fast a year has past and this is the time for the pre-CNY shows to go shoot-shoot-shoot.

[Fave78]

Overall skin tone too yellowish and 'contrast'

my god, look at her leg...pic#14

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by dancemania Looks like a colourful performance! Much better than the Liao Ning one I saw at Marina. Is it still on next week?

Yes, still on. The whole event will last until late next month ...26 Feb.

For this troop from Hokkien Province in China, the last day will be tomorrow .....15 Jan.

http://forums.clubsnap.com/showthread.php?t=341368

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by smallaperture Thanks Clockunder for the interesting pictures - as usual the quality pic. Makes my right index finger itchy to go shooting leh. So fast a year has past and this is the time for the pre-CNY shows to go shoot-shoot-shoot.

There are many events coming for the CNY period.

This Saturday have Chinatown Lightup.

Many other CNY shows coming up too in other shopping centres.

Later still got Sentosa Flowers Festival 2008 during the first 2 weeks of CNY.

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by Fave78 Overall skin tone too yellowish and 'contrast' my god, look at her leg...pic#14

Thanks for the feedback.

This camera always gives an undesired yellow cast whenever the flash is used in low light, regardless of the white balance used. I had previously tried in the past using incandescant WB or even customing my WB but the results are the same with a yellow cast whenever I use the built-in flash. I find it strange.

I guess the only way to go around this is to shoot in RAW but I almost always shoot in jpeg because there I'm afraid of not enough memory in my card for RAW shooting during each of my outing. Noise reduction is also more work for RAW.

As for the "too contrasty" skins, it's due to the scene's high dynamic range as a result of the lightings there. As can be deduced from the pictures, if the faces were correctly exposed, the lower portion would be grossly under-exposed. There were only 2 rows of about 4 spot lights shinning on the stage from the side with 1 row on each side and they were concentrated only on certain areas of the stage. So the variation of light intensity around the stage was too wide for the camera's image sensor. This is not help by the fact that high ISO has a narrower dynamic range than at low ISO. As can be seen from the 7pm pictures, the situation is even worst when there wasn't any sunlight coming from the sunroof above.

In fact, the background became so relatively bright that the performer sometimes appeared backlit, especially when he/she was near the front of the stage as the spot lights were concentrated shinning towards the centre of background.

I had intended not to use flash, just like in past years for this event at Raffles City. After the initial few shots, I realised that I needed to use my built-in flash to at least add a bit of light to the shadow areas. If not, either the background would be grossly over-exposed or the performer would be under-exposed due to the grossly bright background and much dimmer front of the stage, depending on spot or multi area (aka matrix) metering I used.

I guess a strong external flash with a good diffuser is needed for this kind of light condition.

As for her legs, ..............well ..........may be it's just an oversight.

[leejay]

Very beautiful pictures~

[friends]

Hi
Nice photo
Thank you for the photo
Keep it up.
regards.
friends

[xunjas]

a different taste of culture~~ =)

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by leejay Very beautiful pictures~

Originally Posted by friends Hi Nice photo Thank you for the photo Keep it up. regards. friends

Thanks guys.

I'm still waiting to see pictures taken by others to give me some inspirations for improvement.

So far, other than another post in this sub-forum, I've only seen Yilishenxian's pictures at his album website and another Olympus DSLR user's pictures for this event.

Looking forward to see some pictures from you guys for this event.

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by xunjas a different taste of culture~~ =)

I suppose you're refering to the "mentality" of China artists?

Just like in S'pore in the past, artists or sellers in China may even tell people off : "If you never think of buying, don't see".

They're not appreciative of people who just want to admire their works and they are only interested in people who want to buy their works.

This mentality is also partly cultivated by the lack of copyrights protection in China in the past where similar works may be produced by copy cats without any repercussions. So photography of their works is not welcome by artists.

[vincecarlo]

fantastic pix. u have brought out the best of Fuji prosumer

[Clockunder]

A few more pictures taken on the same day (12 Jan Saturday) as above (#16 and #17 were taken at ISO 400 while #18 and #19 at ISO 800 ):

#16 at ISO 400 during 4pm show


#17 at ISO 400


#18 at ISO 800 during 7pm show


#19 at ISO 800

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by vincecarlo fantastic pix. u have brought out the best of Fuji prosumer

Thanks.

My main use for this camera is to shoot indoor events like this and also fashion shows etc.

ISO 800 seems quite clean when the picture is well exposed once it's resized down to about 800x600 pixels for web viewing even when I don't do any further noise reduction during post-processing. All the pictures shot at ISO 800 shown in this thread are without any further noise reduction. Apparently, the in-camera jpeg processing has reduced much of the noise already and still managed to keep a reasonable amount of details.

[friends]

Originally Posted by Clockunder Thanks guys. I'm still waiting to see pictures taken by others to give me some inspirations for improvement. So far, other than another post in this sub-forum, I've only seen Yilishenxian's pictures at his album website and another Olympus DSLR user's pictures for this event. Looking forward to see some pictures from you guys for this event.

Yes. Yilishenxian's picture is super....I am ashamed to share those photo that is taken.
Please advice. most of your photo doesn't seem to use flash, isn't it?

regards.
friends

[eow]

Originally Posted by Clockunder Thanks guys. I'm still waiting to see pictures taken by others to give me some inspirations for improvement. So far, other than another post in this sub-forum, I've only seen Yilishenxian's pictures at his album website and another Olympus DSLR user's pictures for this event. Looking forward to see some pictures from you guys for this event.

yr fujifilm 6500 already did very well.
went for the show find the lightings differences by around two stop.especially for the front and back
Here some of mine shot taken using available light

[Cyber]

Impressive Eow bro ....