photog_in_nc

Here’s a decent intro to inverse square law and the relation between flash power and your f-stop, as well as distance. Once you really get all this, the rest starts falling into place.

https://petapixel.com/inverse-square-law-light/

If you have the first gen Tamron, make sure it has the firmware update that fixes Autofocus. I use that lens often shooting shows and get great stuff. The way more expensive Sony GM is better at handling stage lights, but the Tamron is plenty sharp.

As far as banding, make sure you aren’t in silent mode and electronic shutter, use mechanical.

My go to exposure settings are pretty close to yours, but I use 1/250th, and that makes a difference. A static singer-songwriter, I may go much lower. A very energetic performer, I may bump higher. I just let auto-ISO do its thing these days. I’ve had amazing shots at crazy high ISO, and Lightroom’s Denoise AI cleans then up well.

I generally use AF-C, low, with subject tracking.

I never use Auto in Lightroom. I tweak all the sliders to taste by hand. I‘ll use Auto White Balance as a starting place, but that’s it.

Outside that sort of technical stuff, mostly the difference between good and great is going to come from capturing the right moment, the framing, etc. that is more about the photographer than anything else.

First off, Lightroom on the Mac is a big resource hog. 8GB is the minimum requirement and Adobe recommends 16GB. That’s just the basic recommendation, regardless of what files you are editing. And then you are editing A7Riv raw files, so you are really going to be taxing things.

Solo trips that you can dedicate yourself to shooting was game changing for me.

As a photographer, I’d be really worried about running afoul of labor laws if I had an unpaid intern. But I know how this business is, and there’s a lot of people that skirt the rules