Gig photos

[weka2000]

Hey Adam why do your B&W pics always look so good?

[Adam]

Thanks Tony - no real secret. I just play around in PS until I like the look of them. (no plug-ins).

[Desmond]

Nikon D40

I've done a few dance events and used the D40 with a 70-200 F2.8 lens .
These were taken with the D40 .





The main trick I have found to shooting in dark places is to set for under-exposure because the camera is noticing all the dark areas and trying to brighten them not knowing that they are supposed to be dark .
With the 70-200 lens I was using centre weighted metering and -1.3 ev compensation .
But if you are using a wider lens which you probably will be , in a case like that I use matrix metering -2 ..... actually have a look at post #9 on my ''comparison thread " for my reasoning on the settings I use !

[Dni]

i shoot at 150 or 200 shutter speed on 1000 ISO with a 50mm 1.8 works sweet as for me.

This is the magic formula that I swear by as well.

My only other tips are:
-Shoot in RAW, so that you can correct the lighting when your photos turn into a great big haze of one colour.
-Never use flash
-Avoid going on stage to photograph the band. A while back I was at a gig where an amateur photographer knocked the power cable to a guitarists amp, and he was unable to play for the rest of his set.

Took this last weekend with those very settings

[Possum]

Aww, I love gig photos... I love music photos. IME, I have dropped everything to manual, wide open aperture and underexpose the bejeezus out of it. I manual focus too. I'm a bit of a wombat when it comes to low light photography - my camera (Olympus e520) is pretty hideous with noise in the high ISOs, so I stay with 100-200. I don't use a tripod either, I just breathe in and stay very still, lol. (Which all in all is a recipe for disaster! I think I have super human stillness....)

Here are a few low light images of mine:







(The lovely Jan Hellriegel, and the next two are during the recording of her album)

xxx Lou

[bigROBOTbill]

I didn't take my camera to the Ry Cooder concert in Auckland last weekend. It was an outstanding concert too I might add!
Didn't think it would be allowed. They made an announcement saying take photos if you must during the first song but no more after.


It was interesting to observe security people shining lazers onto people persisting with their cell phones and moving in to harrass them after the first track.

The Civic was a sea of blad pates and grey hair. Very happy oldies!

[flashpoint]

-Never use flash
-Avoid going on stage to photograph the band.

kindof disagree.. avoid direct flash.. its ok to bounce.. but most "real" gigs dont allow flash anyway.
i've successfully used off camera flash at an event.. just be aware it will impact your whitebalance in lights that change colour all the time. ....shy away from autowhitebalance.. otherwise all your shots will have different colour casts.. i use a manual whitebalance (not custom whitebalance.. theres a difference)

1. use maximum aperture (f/1.8 is good.. i get away with 2.8 ...and once you get the feel for it i have images at f/4)
2. use manual exposure
3.use spot metering.. and meter for a highlight on the face caused by a light.. then once you have that exposure.. its very quick to "tweak" the exposure from there. normally a good place to start is dialing in 1 stop difference. a quick chimp will show you if you're on the right track.
4. keep your shutterspeed higher than your focal length to eliminate handshake.. so logically get as close as possible to use a shorter focal length.. thus you can drop the iso and get less noise.
if they are bouncing around you may want to go faster than 1/focal length rule.

some of my favourite shots have been from on the stage..