Pushing the most out of my gear and myself

Kingsday, a fun day, lots of music, and enough to do

While it is already more than a week ago, and we already have the next festival today, I want to show you some photos I took on Kingsday.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
1000	1/125 S

I wanted to feel the festival mood, but since most of it isn't really my music, I decided to take my camera with me, and see if I could practice and possible get some nice pictures. That way I knew I would entertain myself.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
2500	1/160 S

But under the bands there was a positive outlier. The band Knars. I really enjoyed their music and they had a great vibe on the stage.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
2500	1/160 S

My gear

Camera	Canon EOS M50
Lens	Pallas auto 1:3.5 F 200mm
Speedbooster	Viltrox 0.72x
Editor	Rawtherapee 5.9

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
2500	1/160 S

As you can see, my setup is quite budget. Which didn´t make the job easier. I also have a 55-250mm F4.5-6.3 EF-S lens with automatic zoom. But I choose to use the old manual focus M42 lens, because the M50 doesn´t perform that well in low light, so getting more light into the camera had priority over auto focus. Also I wanted a reasonable zoom level because I didn´t know how busy it would be and how close I could get. I shot all photos with F3.5 or F4.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
1600	1/125 S

This of course gave other problems. Manual focus isn´t easy in the dark and the lens is good if you are spot on. But if you are a bit off, you get chromatic aberration. Needless to say. I lost a lot of pictures because they were not sharp. And some of those I selected, I still rather would have seen sharper. But they are good enough for online in my opinion. So rather this than throwing everything away because I find them too noisy.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
2000	1/125 S

Also it is good practice. And can only get better with better gear. But I enjoyed doing it. And I am quite happy with the photos that succeeded.

Knars

ISO	Shutterspeed
1250	1/125 S

And I already found it out a bit earlier, but don´t let "I don't have the gear for it" stop you. Of course for some things this is true. But while with better gear I would have more photos, I still got a few great pictures from it. So it will mainly reduce the amount of succesfull pictures. But it is great practice and it will get me in a better position later on.

Knars