Camera Settings

Hey, I'm no expert, but my preference is to shoot in Manual mode, no flash. House lighting is very important, but with modern enthusiast DSLRs you can get acceptable noise levels up in the ISO 2000 range, which means you can open up the iris as much as possible - F4.5 or so and aim to shoot at about 1/125 of a second, or as fast as you can get yet slightly underexposing, which usually gives a nice result. Set metering to spot metering and wb fixed settings to "natural". Auto focus and be rutheless about deleting blurred or poor images and crop carefully when you have your final selected images.

If you are thinking of upgrading your lens, take a look at the Sigma 18-200. there should be one for a Nikon (I use a Canon body) It's a great all round lens and it's hardly ever off my camera, despite having a number of other lenses.

Good luck (yes that plays it's part too, I have to say)

Many thanks for the tips.  This will be my 4th show and have kicked myself for not taking a camera previously!  I had shot manual all of the time many years ago when all we had was film and the old style metering system.  Basically because that was all the old Canon would do.  Then as I moved up I got lazy and found myself leaving it on auto most of the time.  I still think my best pictures were back in the day when I played with settings and pushed the ISO some.

I’ve had the privilege of shooting at least 400 concerts in the past five years, for a wide range of different bands.  At least half of these have been shooting a whole show (with the band’s approval), rather than just three songs.  I haven’t been able to do that for Joe yet, but here’s hoping.

Anyway, my point is that I’ve learned through trial and error (and that means a lot of mistakes, with over 200,000 photos taken at concerts) what works for me and what doesn’t in different concert situations.

I, and I’m sure the other more experienced photographers here too, like Geoff, could probably write a book on tips and techniques for concert photography, and we’d still miss lots out.  Concert photography is a difficult skill to master simply because to get the best results you often need to push your camera to its limits, and to do that you need to know what those limits are and how your camera will react to certain settings in any given situation.  And that's before you even think about things like composition!

Probably the most important tip I can offer is….  Always make sure your shutter is fast enough to capture the action, even if that means compromising on exposure.  There are exceptions to this if you want to produce a particular ‘arty’ shot but generally, too slow a shutter speed will result in disappointingly unsharp images.  You can, to a degree, fix an underexposed but sharp image, but you can do nothing with a well exposed but blurred image.

I find that if my shutter speed is less than 1/60th of a second then the vast majority of my images will be completely useless.  They may be well exposed but they will be blurred or at least too ‘soft’.  Between 1/60th and 1/125th I will find probably half of them acceptably sharp, but if the light is good enough for me to go above 1/125th (and especially above 1/200th ) then nearly all of them will be sharp enough.  Of course, you can’t just set your shutter to 1/200th all the time, because very few concerts are lit well enough, and you’d find the images far too dark to use. 

I generally start by setting the camera at 1/100th and take a few shots and check them, then adjust the shutter speed up or down depending on whether the images are too dark or two bright.  To do that you either need the camera on a fully manual setting or at least on a shutter priority setting (TV).

Once you’ve mastered adjusting the shutter speed to get the best results, then you can look at adjusting ISO and aperture settings to improve the shots even further.  To start with put your ISO at the highest you can without the images appearing too grainy.  For SLRs this is usually around 800-1600 ISO (maybe a little higher with newer cameras).  For point and shoot cameras it usually means up to about 400 ISO (any higher and the grain/noise deteriorates the image too much in my opinion).

For aperture, start by putting it as wide open as your lens will allow.  That means about f2.8 on most pro lenses, or more likely f3.5 – f5.6 for other lenses.  -  the lower the number the more light it will allow into your camera.  If the lighting is good enough you can play with different aperture setting to improve depth of field etc, but that would be a whole other lesson.

There are probably as many opinions about best techniques as there are photographers, and the above is just some of the things that work for ME.  At least as a base point.  I wouldn’t say I adhere to my own advice all the time, as once you have a few decent shots in the bag you can start experimenting and trying different things.  Some will work and some won’t but the important thing is to learn from it, ready for next time.

Marty

This thread should be a sticky, with the more experienced throwing out advice and tips for those of us less experienced photographers.  Excellent reading for someone (me) anticipating recieving my first DSLR tomorrow. Thanks for the great advise.

Hi Rob, good to see you here.  I agree that images don't have to be sharp, and when done deliberately an unsharp image can be stunning.  However, I find that when I'm looking back at potentially several hundred images from a gig, most of my slightly blurred images get thrown out straight away as they often look and feel a little disappointing.  The shots I keep and, certainly if they are also underexposed, the shots I can do most with are the sharper ones.

Unfortunately I missed the two BCC gigs as I spent New Year in the States - I fly home tomorrow.  Sounds like it was a great show though.

I will definitely set up those seminars in the next few weeks.  As you say, there is likely to be some lively discussion.

Marty