Through The Lens

To be honest, I was not happy with my pictures taken during the night event. I am not going to blame on other aspects that I can’t control – environment, stage lightings, the subjects, etc. That was when I said to myself, without external flash – I’ll be doomed. Later I found out if you lack of something, make full use of other thing. Ok lah, let loosen up a bit. These set of kompang boys pictures were taken when they performed their winning routine – with all that fancy dress and fancy dancing.

I got my SAL 18-70mm intact since those kids were just few steps away from where I secured my place in front of the stage. It’s obvious the court was dark, right? The only light source I can find was the lights under the tent. I THINK I don’t have the advantage there.

With the pop-up flash of my A200, I set the aperture to F6.3 and shutter speed to 1/5 – to capture movement and trail of lights. IN MY OPINION, that would make the image look alive. After few shots, I tried the rotating move using the SAL18-70 lens. Unlike the 70-210mm, the rotation process doesn’t lag you off – it was really smooth with the 18-70 lens.

But still I have to pump the ISO up to somewhere around 800. Seriously man. I never try to use the 3200 – only use it for emergency – which thankfully never happen to me. Ouch! I got red eye there!

Those boys featured above was the kompang group whom won the kompang competition held by UMS-KAL.

So let’s move to the next session – traditional dance. The emcee informed the audience that this group of dancers won a title in the recent competition held somewhere (which I’m not interested to know). The only thing on my mind was… the stage was built like a bottleneck. When you have more than 6 dancers performing on such stage, you get a little chance to have all of them closer to you.

So I switched to the 70-210 lens and crossed my fingers that everything will be alright. FYI, I studied the stage lighting with Rosli earlier, and we agreed that such setting would be great for battle of the bands. Apparently, we were right.

So pity those guys at the back didn’t get showered by the lights.

Shot at 70mm. It’s really colorful lah – but not on my camera with my stupid wrong settings.

This one ok lah I think.

An external flash would make this shot more better I think (with assumption that I can lit the dancers at the front).

I tried to get some sort of movement + repetition in this image, but no, I failed. I forgot about DOF, really.

These boys did delivered a good dance with all their best.

Ok lah, that’s all. This is the final installation of the closing ceremony of the UMS-KAL Convo Fiesta. No, I don’t have those girls punya phone number…