Newbie- Small club, live band photo tips?

Hello all,

I have been trolling here a while and you helped me make my mind up..I bought a D80 last week. So far, I am happy!

I will continue to read up and am also taking a few classes, so I will try limit the amount of newbie questions.

HOWEVER, I am going to a lot of live shows in the next few weeks (including tonight) and I thought I would ask for some basic advise. I'm using the 18-70 lens (the only lens I own at the moment) and would like to shoot these bands, hopefully from a fairly short distance. At these clubs the light can be iffy and, as it's punk-ish type music the players tend to move around a good bit.

Because I am a beginner I could just go auto, but if you have any suggestions as to other settings that might work well I would appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.

my first piece of advice would be to invest in fast glass. if you're on a budget, get the 50mm f1.8 - its the best bang for buck out there.

if you're only using the 18-70mm, using flash might be the only way to get some descent photos unless there's ample lighting. many of these small dark clubs can be a nightmare.

set the camera to A mode, shoot wide open, set to spot metering, up the ISO (my suggestion would be to start around 1250 and move up to 1600 or more if needed) and learn to pan. if your musicians are hopping around, you'll have to follow them as they move to try and get a good shot.

i'm sure there's other folks out there that could give better advice, but that's what i could think of. dont forget to experiment, thats the only way to really learn imo. good luck and be sure to show us some results.

norma

With the kit lens you will need flash unless you are in a brightly lit club, which I doubt. Try taking a picture in your house with the lights on and no flash at 1/125 to see what I mean.

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Everything happens for a reason.

1. 1 reason: poor planning

allogist said:

Hello all,

I have been trolling here a while and you helped me make my mind
up..I bought a D80 last week. So far, I am happy!
I will continue to read up and am also taking a few classes, so I
will try limit the amount of newbie questions.
HOWEVER, I am going to a lot of live shows in the next few weeks
(including tonight) and I thought I would ask for some basic
advise. I'm using the 18-70 lens (the only lens I own at the
moment) and would like to shoot these bands, hopefully from a
fairly short distance. At these clubs the light can be iffy and, as
it's punk-ish type music the players tend to move around a good bit.
Because I am a beginner I could just go auto, but if you have any
suggestions as to other settings that might work well I would
appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Shoot in auto if you are most comfortable with it, but I'd consider shooting in manual mode. It might be a crash course in exposure, but it's going to be a valuable lesson if you want to shoot a lot of shows.

Don't be afraid of high ISO. The nigh noise performance of the D80 looks pretty great, so don't be afraid to shoot at ISO 1600 or even 3200. For all the fuss on these forums, a little noise is not going to be the end of your images, especially if it means being able to execute the shots you want.

If you're going to use flash, it doesn't matter nearly so much whether you have a fast lens or are using high ISO.

If it's punky music, you're probably going to best served by going wide and getting in close to capture the energy -- especially if the musicians are moving around a lot.

Good luck.

Todd

Just so you are clear on this, the 18-70 will probably be zoomed in most of the time. That means that your aperture will be f4.5 if I'm not mistaken. A cheap f1.8 50mm lens will give you 3 stops better light performance. For example, if you need iso 1600 with your kit lens, the 50 will use iso 200. If you shoot at 18mm which you might only do for a couple of atmosphere shots, then you will have the best possible aperture from that lens and the difference will be ISO 1600 vrs ISO 400 for the 50mm.

Let's turn that around. The 50mm at iso 1600 might need 1/100th sec. That same setting on your lens will be 1/25th second or 1/10th sec using a little zooming. It is not fun to use your kit lens in that situation.

Of course if you have the money you could get the f1.4 but if you don't know what focal length is your favorite you could just as well save some money until you find that out.

Guy Moscoso

Remember...Newbie! (in fact, I hope I even post these correctly)

Resized, no PP.

So, what worked for you as far as lenses and technique?

Todd

allogist said:

Click to expand...

I picked up the 50 1.8 and shot in A mode with apeture wide open at 1600 ISO. I believe I had "High ISO noise reduction" on "normal".

Still took lots of blurred pictures, but a fair number of clear ones (maybe 70 or so), as well.

It was my first time using a camera (lens) that didn't have a zoom, so it took a while to get used to it. The hardest part was that this band has a very dedicated, somewhat rabid following (they are from Canada and don't tour the East Coast very often) so I was getting bumped around pretty bad.

Luckilly, camera and photograper escaped uninjured.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Allogist,

Now that you have some pictures, you can learn from them. Keep the ones that were blurry so you can see which shutter speeds didn't work. You need to start using manual mode. Don't get scared by it because you actually have enough pics taken in A mode to learn from them. See which shutter speed worked best. It aint hard to just take a couple of pics to see if you are on track with shutter speed.

Remember that the f1.8 setting has a narrow DOF. The subject can either be centered or placed off center using the 2/3rds rule. I try both, and sometimes one works better than the other. Remember it's not a video camera so taking pics of fast motion isn't always gonna work. Traditional techniques of waiting for stopped motion can work. Don't forget to get pics after they have finished their song; you might be able to catch the tiredness, and/or dripping sweat, or speaking at the mic. Of course you want the heat of the action, but low light and fast motion can work against you so those less interesting pictures might be the only in focus pictures from the night.

Remember start choosing your shutter speed. Don't let the camera do it. Once you fnd the shutter speed you like, then you are going to get many more keepers.

Guy Moscoso

My first post here! Been lurking for a while and getting a lot of help and finally something comes along that I have a little experience with!

I've been taking photographs for 6 or 7 months now with my D50 (before that it was purely compacts for me) and a lot of what I shoot is band photography. The examples shown are all shot with the D50 and the standard 18-55mm kit lens, all with no flash and minimum Photoshop treatment. Bear in mind that for a lot of bands, especially the more famous ones like the bottom 2 Whitesnake shots below, you won't be allowed to use flash. You'll also generally only get the first 3 songs to shoot from the photo pit and that's it (after the first 3 songs the 'stars' don't look so pretty so they don't like to be photographed!).

All of the shots below were taken at ISO1600 - like another poster said, I wouldn't worry too much about a little noise or grain on your shots with music photography. The composition, expression, lighting, etc is far more important I think. All were taken at speeds of between 1/80s and 125/s in the f/3.5-f/5 range.

Best advice I can give is to shoot LOTS! For example, during the Whitesnake shoot, I shot 200 images over 3 songs (around 15 minutes, I guess).

Hope that helps a little and good luck, but most importantly, have fun!

Matt

I used to take a lot of photos at punk rock shows. Depending on what you're looking for I definetely shoot with a flash capable of bounce. I loved slow rear curtain sync shots where you could see movement and expressing the energy of the music. Also try B+W as well as color. And as another person mentioned, high shutter speeds and fast lenses help, but if you have a nice flash and are close enough that will help. Good luck.

iso3200, do as others say, if your tight for wonga, get the 50mm 1.8, you should be able you use this wide open at 1.8 with a film speed of approx 400 and still easily get 1/125 or better, you'd have to be in a completely darkened room for such a high speed film as 3200, not that it doesnt have is place, but i think the grain on return would render your shots null and void for anyones use to be honest
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what i said before, and i should have also said that a lot will depend on avail light as others have mentioned, but the shot below was with a 50mm 1.8 @ 500 and 1/80th, but remember allways but always shoot raw, that way you have more latitude for pulling anything back, beit white ball or exposure



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