Quetzal

Quetzal is a latin rock band out of East LA. They had incredible energy and put on a really great show. It always makes it so much easier to shoot a show when the performers are charismatic and out there having fun.

The light levels for this show were particularly low. I had to shoot at iso 5000 at f/2.8 with a shutter speed that ranged from 1/100 to 1/200 sec. The D3 has such great high iso capabilities, but I feel that over iso 4000, things get a little touchy. I use Lightroom for the majority of my post processing but at high iso Capture NX does a much better job. Capture NX seems to retain details better where Lightroom would make the image blotchy and overly smooth. It is also much easier to retain shadow detail with Capture NX. The big problem is Capture NX is so slow! It probably takes 2-3 times as long simply because you’re waiting for Capture NX to process.

So it’s a real love hate thing with Capture NX. If it was faster and had a workflow like Lightroom, it would be my dream processing tool. I can’t say enough about the U-Point technology too. I love that thing! It makes adjustments so easy. The other thing is Capture NX renders the image as dots, which I find more pleasing, whereas most other software renders the image in irregular “crystal-like” spots. I tried to make the images below as close as possible but I just couldn’t get anything decent out of Lightroom on this one. This is a 100% crop.

So I’ll happily turn to Capture NX for a small number of ?important shots, but I really pray that I will not have to use it for an entire shoot! At normal iso Lightroom is still my tool of choice.

Anyway, below are more pictures from the show. La Colectiva from San Jose opened.