Shooting events in difficult lighting situations

Posted on 14 October 2010

I shoot a lot of events for my school newspaper, The Keystone.  Usually, I get lucky and will be able to shoot in quality available light or a brightly lit indoor event.  Recently, most of the events I have shot have been indoors, in a theater.  The dramatic lightning used during these events is not conducive to photography.  The lights are not extremely bright and the light on the performers is usually white and harsh.  I do not own a camera like the Nikon D700 or D3 and have a hard time getting quality photos at high ISOs.  However, I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way, mainly through trial and error, that should help you out if you find yourself in a similar situation.

I started out shooting with no exposure compensation and would get shots that look like this: (Keep in mind, I added an extra stop of exposure on this shot to illustrate my point)

Now, as you can see, the shot is terribly over-exposed and all the details are washed out and grainy.  I dialed down my exposure compensation in camera a full stop and came away with the following raw image.

Most of the detail has returned, but it is still a little washed out.  At least it is salvageable.  Using Lightroom’s or Photoshop’s recovery slider on a RAW image can bring back a lot of the lost detail in the face and shirt.  After bumping it up to almost 100 and using some curves, you can get a very usable image, as seen below.

The details in the chest and face are visible and the photo looks a lot better.  It is hard to get a shot in this kind of light, but by dialing down the EV compensation and doing a little post, you can get something very usable.