taking photos at a gig, any tips?

[lexie]

on friday night i'm going to the first showing of a mates bands new video at a local rock bar. i'm up early the next morning so i'll not be drinking and thought i might as well take the camera along to since i'll be stone cold sober and i might learn something.

the lighting will be far from ideal with just a couple of harsh lights on the small stage the band will be playing on, and i will only have the on-body flash.

i have the following lenses to choose from
18-55/3.5-5.6 kit lens (af)
35-90/4-5.6 tamron (af)
58/f2 helios (mf)

i'm leaning towards the 18-55 because i'm unlikely to need the slightly longer range of the tamron in a small confined area and the manual focus of the helios might be a hinderance, although it's a faster lens which i like the idea of.

can the histogram shown in liveview be trusted in low light conditions or when using the flash? or is it going to be trial and error in getting the exposure right?

 

[TCR4x4]

First off, if the band are performing, then live view will no way focus fast enough to capture anything.
Second, on camera flash in my experience and opinion looks awfull in live gig situations. I'd mach rather see a natual (well as natural as gig lighting is) shots with no flash.
So all but your manual focus lens probably wont be fast enough.
I dont think manual focus would be too bad, in low light your other lenses might struggle to focus anyway, so I think you'd be better off with the widest aperture you can get and just up the ISO to get a decent shutter speed.
Stick the camera in Aperture mode, set to f/2, start the ISO on 400 and work up from there until you get sharp shots. If you are lucky the lighting will be good, so you might get away with ISO 800
Most of my live stuff was done at ISO 1600 on a Nikon D200 at f/2.8 and that was pushing the limit a bit.

 

[grum]

Have a look for the gig photography tutorial on here. I can't see any apart from the MF lens being fast enough really. Most smaller gigs have pretty poor lighting. I have got some pretty good shots with that lens, but focussing can be fairly hit and miss wide open. I got it about right then used burst mode and just picked the ones that were in focus.

Most of these were taken with the Helios - http://www.flickr.com/photos/18244158@N00/sets/72157624223909924/

 

[lexie]

thanks for the tips guys. i went for it with the helios using iso 800, f/2 or 2.8 and s/s of between 1/60 and 1/160. the lighting and dof played havoc with the focusing, but it's all part of the learning curve i guess.

here are a couple of shots i got