Concert Photography

Peter69

Peter69

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Peter
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I've been given the opportunity to get some photos at a concert. Now I've tried this before and failed but this time I will be in the photo pit.

Now that's all I know - I need a big help with a HOW & what with.

Sorry I can't give any info as I have no idea on questions or problems that will arise in poor light fast moving scenes.
 
Well I shot a few concert from my point of view it's about knowing the limit of your camera in low light and have good lenses. If shooting concert you should carry at least an f2.8 am 1.2 would be ideal if you can Handel the constant search for focus. Know the limit of your cam will allow you to know how far your ISO can go before things start getting completely bad.
It's depend on a lot of things also. For me it's about the moments, so I brought a monopod my eyes is glue on my view finder waiting to capture what I think is a good moment. Sometimes if the moment is great it doesn't matter if the photo is focus or blurred. I hope that help you find your way.
Cheers
 
I was going to get the Tamron 24-70 2.8 vc. I have a 70-200 but think it might be too long. My D5100 is ok to iso1000 but I see the big boys use iso 10,000 on their top end cameras. So they have 3 stops & better af then I do.
I'll practice with the VC restrictions and thought at set the auto iso to min except speed vr can cope with and max iso1000. I guess you would recommend turning high iso noise reduction on? On the D5100 that can slow its 4fps quite a bit.

Thanks for your reply
 
I recently shot a concert (sort of) in low light conditions. I chose to leave WB in auto as the disco lights were all over the place and sort that in PP. Using 2 f2.8 lens' helped a lot and went as high as ISO 6400 with great results. Don't worry too much about noise/grain as this can actually add a little something to certain shots, concentrate more on capturing the moment, a tack sharp image with noise is far more acceptable than an out of focus image imo. Good luck.
 
I shoot classical music concerts.
#1 Fast lenses (preferably F2)
#2 High ISO (usually 1600 +)
#3 RAW (for nouise reduction, and white balance, when PPing).
#4 Use what ever metering method you are comfortable with.
#5 No filters (they may cause unwanted flare)
#6 Lens hoods (to help reduce flare)
#7 Centre focus point only active
#8 shoot a little loose (to allow for some compositial cropping when PPing)
#9 I shoot aperture priority with the lens usually wide open. If there is moore light than needed I will reduce the ISO, especially if shooting at 3200, and/or stop the lens down a little.
Have fun.
 
I'm not sure the D5100 can go that high on iso without losing a lot of colour depth. I think 1000 maybe its limit.
 
If there's a dark background to your subject make sure you use the appropriate metering method. In my limited experience i've always used spot or centre weighted depending on the scene. I found if i used pattern/matrix (whatever it's called :LOL: ) the camera was trying to balance the scene out and i ended up with overexposed subjects and horribly noisy backgrounds. Even then sometimes it needed some negative compensation to make it look right :) With this in mind, you may get away with lower ISOs than you think. At the last one i did i was shooting at ISO 800 on a 2.8 lens, but the lights on her were pretty strong, she was also a solo artist so the light was more concentrated on her as oppose to lighting the entire stage.

Colour can be a real issue too, so make sure you shoot in raw to you have the best chance of getting it right in post. Every performer i've ever shot on stage has had differing colours of light changing pretty darn often making colour control pretty difficult, but software is magic and alot can be saved :) If anyone has a more consistent method for this i am all ears :LOL:
 
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With colour you can look at it a couple of ways.

You can "try" to make the colours correct (ie whites are white) or as the lighting director wants (multicoloured stage lighting on the one subject).
It can be extreemly difficult to get "correct" colours even when shooting raw and PPing.

I was advised not to second guess or "fight" the lighting director.
 
Being in 'The Pit' isn't always ideal, you can see from this shot of Bez from The Happy Mondays at a recent show, being in 'The Pit' means you are between the audience and the artist and there is not a lot of space. So a wide angle lens is ideal. I usually shoot with a 17-55 F2.8 but have just bought a Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 to use as a 'Pit Lens' on my back up body hopefully allowing me to shoot directly in front of the artist.

Chances are if there is a proper pit, the Pit Rules will apply and you'll only be in there for the first three songs and then you're out. This isn't always the case, I've shot a couple of shows where it has been open pit, but be prepared if its only three songs, don't dither. Don't panic and run round like a mad fool tripping over people to try and get as many shots as possible. Just think about what you are going to do and go about it methodically.

Again if its a big enough venue to have a pit it should have decent lighting so you wont have to wind the iso up like you do in smaller venues. Start at 1600, centre focus, central metering, although I do flick between centre metering and overall metering checking quickly on the back of the camera to see which is working best.



What was on Bez's piece of paper ? A note saying 'F*** the Frackers !!! F*** the Bankers !'

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Serendipitous Sid said:
And wear ear plugs :cool:
Click to expand...

And if you like the band and want to hear them properly but at a reduced volume, get a set of ER20 ear plugs.

And a note about exposure. Concerts are usually dark. Your meter will try to make it look like a normal 18% reflectance, daylight type of scene so you might neeed to compensate by reducing exposure by one or two stops.


Steve.
 
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