The year started with a flurry of shoots, and this particular session was my friend Bihzhu performing at a rather interesting setup - a restaurant lit only by table lamps. I have been following Bihzhu for many of her live shows and performance, and I have to say this was by far the most challenging one I have ever faced. It was dim, and the available light was not easy to work with. I brought along my usual workhorse, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and a plethora of bright, prime lenses for this particular shoot. I found myself shooting at ISO6400 on average, and at times needing to go higher. They say you can't shoot low light with Micro Four Thirds. I say, screw you, here are some shots! Special thanks to Bihzhu for allowing me to share these images.
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Anticipating the low light environment, I armed myself with prime lenses only for this shoot. I had with me Panasonic 9mm F1.7, 15mm F1.7, Olympus 25mm F1.8, 45mm F1.8 and 75mm F1.8 lenses. The brighter aperture was essential to gather as much light as possible, and even so I found myself needed to use ISO higher than 3200 most of the time to achieve shutter speeds of 1/100 and faster. Bihzhu and her band mates moved a lot, so sufficiently fast shutter speed was necessary to achieve blur free shots. It was also a joy to use these prime lenses, they were so small, so compact and easy to handle, and they don't take much space in the bag at all. I can move freely and easily, getting from one place to another for different compositions and variety of shots. I can go near and far, for different coverage. Some would scoff at the need to change lenses, but F1.8 is a huge advantage over zooms, say F2.8, you basically have more than 1 stop of light to work with!
The problem with this shoot was not so much on the low light, but the bad lighting quality. People always just complain about light levels, or being dark, but you can have a very dim light yet get good results, if the quality of light is good. In this case, the source of light was from table lamps, all placed below the head height of the performers, and the light shining from bottom up caused unfavorable look on the performers' faces. You know how those horror movie look with torch light pointing upward on the face? Yeap, exactly that, though not to the same extreme. I just wish there was some light coming from above the performers, from ceiling or overhead, that would have mitigated some ugly shadows on the faces. That was something that I have zero control over, so I just shot the scene as was, and did some balancing in post-editing so the shadows on the faces was not too harsh, but there was only so much I can do in editing. I still don't like the overall look, but hey, I am not a miracle worker. My job as a photographer was to capture what was there.
The files came out plagued with digital noise all over, as expected from smaller image sensor Micro Four Thirds camera. I did not expect clean results when I went up to ISO12800, that was a no-no. There are more important things to worry about than noise here - I prioritize the emotion, expression and energy of the performance. I focus on the right moments, and I always say this - moments trump noise. You may look at some grain but if the image has a powerful emotion to convey, a strong moment that made you look twice, then you can quickly forgive the grain. I am least affected by the noise problem, now I just want my photographs to capture what was there. I wish more photographers would obsess less about technical perfection and start focusing on what truly matters in photography. You may have a noise-free image, but if you failed to capture the essence of the image, that is still an empty, noise-free image.
It was a fun experience shooting this particular performance by Bihzhu. I think it was her first public show of the year and I am thankful to be a part of it. It has been a wonderful start to the new year 2024, and I only hope the positive energy continues on!
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