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Hello,

My name is Lee Jackson, and I founded and own the company Prime Time Digital Media, Inc., and am also the senior photographer. Much of my work has been promotional photography for musicians, usually used for CD cover artwork, posters, promo shots, fan club materials, etc.

I am branching out into live concert photography to start working on tour books and tour photo logs for bands as they are on tour. I use a Canon EOS 20D with a couple different lenses. I then use a 20" Intel Core-Duo iMac for processing RAW images through Apple's Aperture program, and finally, use Photoshop for any final retouches.

My question to you is:
I am having such a difficult time finding the right manual settings to use in low-light, fast-moving concert shots! As you know, most rock bands move so much on stage, the lighting is constantly changing, and sometimes there is barely any light at all to work with (especially if shooting at a smaller club with poor stage lighting). To add to this, I am constantly having to move around to capture shots from different angles, so a tripod is out of the question...

I would really like to know if you have any experience in shooting photos in these conditions. If so, I would really appreciate any tips you can give me on the manual settings you would suggest I try. I am covering a very successful band NEXT weekend, and really need to have my skills up to par for this band. So any information and tips you would be willing to share regarding ISO settings, shutter speeds, aperture, etc would be so very much appreciated! Also, if there is a particular lens and/or filter(s) that would work with my EOS 20D that you would recommend, I would appreciate that as well!

Lee:

I use a Nikon, but I've had success in using a "prime" lens - 50mm standard F 1.4. This lens is so fast that you can usually just set the F-Stop at 1.4 and the shutter should be just fine on auto. These photos usually are 1/60 second on ISO 200.

However, they are not that exciting. Since I'm a patron in the crowd I really enjoy using a wide angle 18 mm lens which is great for smaller stages. You can see some examples in my "Bands" portfolio. Since this lens is slow, I wind up pushing the ISO to about 1000 and get a lot of noise as a result.

I have set the camera against walls and posts for some interesting motion blur shots - long exposure stuff.

In daytime on a big stage I can break out the 500 mm.

At night at a concert I think you will need to go with the fastest lens you can find. If you know a sports photographer, ask them to help you out. Rock concerts at night and football games are actually quite the same - high fast action with low light. I think you may get the suggestion to go drop $5K US on a massive telephoto though.

just my two cents - I work for a small weekly paper in a small town (Little Rock) and the local bars have some of the darkest lighting I've ever encountered. the attached is a sample shot under VERY bad lighting - the settings are ISO 1600 at around f 2.8 - 3.5 if I can get it and about 1/60th of a secont - though I've gone as slow as 1/30th - 1/15th in desperation - did I mention the light was terrible? Noise - Heck Yes - but if you use a little noise ninja it smoothes it out a lot.

sorry - forgot to mention - I shot most of it with a 50mm f 1.8, an 85mm f 1.8 - and close up to the stage I sometimes use a 20mm f 1.8 Sigma - the first two are nikkors.

There are a few answers to the same question that Lee posted in the Digital Q&A forum here.

Thanks so much to everyone for your input - it has proven to be very valuable. I have another concert I am covering this weekend and I plan to put some of your combined advice to good use! Thanks again, all!

hmm there an old concert photography saying 1-8th a sec at f8 on 800 iso film will produce viable goods.

It has worked for me on some occasions though admittedly id much prefer to bracket exposures.

Fast lens are not always the best answer..there are actually noctunal lenses you can buy that should produce far better shots...

What these ones do is take the highlights and have them represented as dots..thus allowing for more overexposure due to less streaking damage on the image.

Correct choice of exposure will in fact reduce noise , reciprical failure and other nasty stuff So pay attention and perhaps take more then some shots several times over and under exposing too.

Practise and your sure to get it right eventually.

1/60, 200 with a decent lens should get you even a red-only spot illumnation on the performers. It will be noisy. But there's Neat Image (some like Noise Ninja, which might produce a bit blurrier).

As you can see in your own photo, the highlights are the problem. If you can get an angle on stage or just behind stage, that's interesting. The fan's worm view is interesting for close-up, not necessarily a wide shot. But if a spot shows up, if it's not a dark red or blue, it might require a different angle. But without having to contend with hot spots in the shot, it's not necessarily difficult to get barely lit concert photos, with most any camera. Red only spot that even the eye can't hardly make out - no problem.

I guess it depends, because I've seen old photos of Hawaiian folkloric dancers where the flaming pole does not conceal the dancer. I've seen fireworks shot without blooming, but where the city could still be made out below. So a good lens can help, and also with glare. Some like Sigmas, others their Canon lenses, and so on. Better lens, better photo?

The nocturnal lens was discussed on some forum, where they spoke about one model being mildly radioactive, and causing the glass the darken with time.

One tool that might help - and I'm only supposing, here, because this is out of my realm of personal experience - is a monopod.

Jon

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