Best way to shoot "Battle of the Bands" at school

[Bend The Light]

In 3 weeks time, several student bands will be performing in a "Battle of the Bands" contest at the school at which I am a teacher. I have offered to do the photography for it. All the shots will be staying in-house, and no money will change hands. But it is all good experience for me, and the kids and staff will (hopefully) have some nice momentoes of the show.

Question: Given this layout...


battle of the bands layout by Bend The Light, on Flickr

...where would you position yourself?
I have a canon 400d, can get a battery grip. I have 18-55mm kit lens, 75-300 standard zoom. I have 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 135mm manual lenses. I can get a monopod, or go handheld. Obviously I will not have control over the lights, and it will be dark, with stage lights. I can use all the walkway on the right, or I can go down to the floor in front of the stage.

How would you approach this? I am an amateur, never shot bands, so any advice would be very welcome. Sorrry for the long post, and Thanks in advance.

Craig

 

[Village Idiot]

If you could scrounge up a flash to bounce, that may be your best bet. That's assuming by school stage light you mean the normally crappy stage lighting most schools have.

Normally it's a no no to use flashes for lighting bands, but if you don't have enough illumination from the stage lighting and there's not going to be different color lights flashing about, then it should be took much of an issue.

Your best bet for positioning if going to be the closest you can get with the widest lens you can get. Being right up front with a 28mm lens should let you shoot at about 1/30 shutter speed. If the kids are moving a lot though, you'll probably get motion blur.

When I'm shooting bands at concert venues, I'm usually shooting at least 1/150 and ISO 1600, if not higher ISOs and higher shutter speeds. That's at places that are considered to have good professional lighting.

This was at 1/125, f/2.8, and ISO 4000; with good lighting.


Edit: And don't be scared to use higher ISO. You can probably get away with using 1600 ISO on your camera.

 

[Bend The Light]

Cheers, Village Idiot...

ISO 1600 is MAX on my camera, and it can get noisy. Not sure how the lighting is, to be honest. They have maybe 20 pieces of kit hanging from the gantry on the ceiling, but not sure what they all do. Don't think there's much that "moves"...well, not fast, anyway.

Might be able to sort a flash, but the only one I KNOW I could have is a cheapie - not TTL or anything. For directing away from straightforward it might work...

Lack of any rehearsal/practice time is an issue.

I may be able to rustle up a couple of "digital media" students to take a couple of the schools LUMIX DSLRs up on the walkway and do some shots from there, and I hang about below the stage...

Cheers for your input.

 

[Village Idiot]

If you're a teacher and you have access to the stage, take a trip there after school, turn on the lights, and take a few shots to find out what settings you require to light it.

 

[Bend The Light]

If you're a teacher and you have access to the stage, take a trip there after school, turn on the lights, and take a few shots to find out what settings you require to light it.

Blimey, they don't let us lowly teachers mess with the lights and things!
Honestly, we professionals have laptops that will not do ANYTHING, all locked up, we can't add things, use EXE files, Flash files, can't use bulletin boards. Can't go and play with the "technical" equipment without it going through the service desk, being given a ticket number, waiting 6 days, receiving a reply saying ticket closed (which if you read the details means that they've passed your question onto the person at the desk next to them and are now waiting for an answer) and then waiting another 6 days for the final answer of "No, we have to do it for you, and we're too busy!

So anyway, that's not gonna happen

Sorry, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it? :blushing:

 

[Derrel]

I'd try the 135mm prime lens from farther back. It will have a narrower angle of view behind the subjects than a wide lens from closer range.

 

[skieur]

I would shoot from behind the curtains on the right or lefthand side of the stage or from the raised walkway on the right. I would use mostly the 75mm to 300mm lens and try and get the small areas that are lit by stage lighting to improve your shutterspeeds. A strong flash would be ideal or even video lights that you could turn off after the shot has been taken.

Getting sharp images with good colour is a considerable challenge. Avoiding microphones, speakers and other busy backgrounds that interfere with your subject is even tougher.

Good luck!

skieur

 

[Derrel]

I would shoot from behind the curtains on the right or lefthand side of the stage or from the raised walkway on the right. I would use mostly the 75mm to 300mm lens and try and get the small areas that are lit by stage lighting to improve your shutterspeeds. A strong flash would be ideal or even video lights that you could turn off after the shot has been taken.

Getting sharp images with good colour is a considerable challenge. Avoiding microphones, speakers and other busy backgrounds that interfere with your subject is even tougher.

Good luck!

skieur

Avoiding the microphones, speakers, and other busy backgrounds is where the telephoto lens will come in handy. it will also give you the chance to get some half-decent light metering; under flood- or spot-lighted conditions on a dark stage, ther areas lighted by the stage lighting will tend to OVER-expose grossly if the lens is a wide-angle and the metering pattern is evaluative or overall, unless the lens is a D-lens, and the meter is color-aware...

If you're using older, manual lenses via adapter, as I think you mean, you have to realize that the light metering of spot- and flood-lighted subjects tends toward OVER-exposure under most conditions...the meter in most cameras of your type will want to "brighten up" the overall scene to 18%, which will render the highlight/lighted with gel-spot areas way,way,way too bright and burned out; this is doubly true if the camera and lens are not 100 percent communicating with one another...the net result is usually shutter speeds that are way,way too slow, like 1/20 second, when you really need to be at 1/100 to 1/160 at f/2.8 at ISO 1600 (general range for most more modern theatrical lighting-not set in stone).

The best idea is to shoot in RAW with a fixed white balance, not AUTO, and to shoot to get some decent lighted areas, and let the shadows just fall where they may, and keep the shutter speed at 1/100 or faster.

 

[owlxxx]

If you could scrounge up a flash to bounce, that may be your best bet. That's assuming by school stage light you mean the normally crappy stage lighting most schools have.

Normally it's a no no to use flashes for lighting bands, but if you don't have enough illumination from the stage lighting and there's not going to be different color lights flashing about, then it should be took much of an issue.

Your best bet for positioning if going to be the closest you can get with the widest lens you can get. Being right up front with a 28mm lens should let you shoot at about 1/30 shutter speed. If the kids are moving a lot though, you'll probably get motion blur.

When I'm shooting bands at concert venues, I'm usually shooting at least 1/150 and ISO 1600, if not higher ISOs and higher shutter speeds. That's at places that are considered to have good professional lighting.

This was at 1/125, f/2.8, and ISO 4000; with good lighting.


Edit: And don't be scared to use higher ISO. You can probably get away with using 1600 ISO on your camera.

Brian of SHADOWS FALL???

IF so, FREAKIN' SWEET!!!

 

[JasonLambert]

Erose.... Where are you?

 

[Bend The Light]

Cheers guys. I have a lot to think about. I am also looking into the possibility of a couple of wing-men, post 16 students on the digital media course. They can have a go from the raised walkway, I think. I am leaning towards being in front of the stage, from what quite a few people have told me...we'll see...

Gonna pack up my gear now, and take it into school and have a look - I have a free lesson today, so I could "check out the angles"

 

[Bend The Light]

I've just been down to the hall, obviously not with stage lights and so on...
The front of the stage is lower than I realised, only about 3foot from the ground, tops. I would probably block the audience view if I were there. I'm gonna need to talk to whoever is setting out the audience areas as to whether it'd be ok to be there.
I also went up on the walkway, between 1/3 and 1/2 of the way from the stage, with the 135mm f2.8. Looks like I may be able to use that to isolate one or two of the players at a time.
I could swap to the 50mm 1.8, or 35mm 2.8 for wider shots from there, but I am also going to have some helpers (hopefully) with LUMIX DSLRs - they could also do wide shots, I think.
Can't decide!

 

[gsgary]

Shooting from the back is a good idea i do it a lot like this shot, but i use a 300mmF2.8L and 200mmF2.8L with the 75-300 you are going to have to get a shutter speed above 1/400 which will be a struggle

 

[Bend The Light]

Shooting from the back is a good idea i do it a lot like this shot, but i use a 300mmF2.8L and 200mmF2.8L with the 75-300 you are going to have to get a shutter speed above 1/400 which will be a struggle

Yeah, my kit is on the cheap side at the moment
I keep swinging between the two alternatives - short lens (28mm, f2.8) (Possibly the 50mm f1.8 for aperture, but it's not such an easy lens to use for focussing) below the stage, or longer (135mm, f2.8) from the walkway.

I tried the 75-300 and it doesn't do well for focus, even in the hall in daylight (dim, but not as dark as it will be on the night).

I'm now tending towards the 28mm...and I have 2 or 3 post 16 students can do some shots from the walkway where they will be "out of the way" a bit.

Cheers for your ideas, and the shot here is great. If I get 1/4 of that quality I'll be happy!

 

[Village Idiot]

I'd try the 135mm prime lens from farther back. It will have a narrower angle of view behind the subjects than a wide lens from closer range.

If you're a teacher and you have access to the stage, take a trip there after school, turn on the lights, and take a few shots to find out what settings you require to light it.

Blimey, they don't let us lowly teachers mess with the lights and things!
Honestly, we professionals have laptops that will not do ANYTHING, all locked up, we can't add things, use EXE files, Flash files, can't use bulletin boards. Can't go and play with the "technical" equipment without it going through the service desk, being given a ticket number, waiting 6 days, receiving a reply saying ticket closed (which if you read the details means that they've passed your question onto the person at the desk next to them and are now waiting for an answer) and then waiting another 6 days for the final answer of "No, we have to do it for you, and we're too busy!

So anyway, that's not gonna happen

Sorry, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it? :blushing:

I work in the IT department. Hate me yet?

If you could scrounge up a flash to bounce, that may be your best bet. That's assuming by school stage light you mean the normally crappy stage lighting most schools have.

Normally it's a no no to use flashes for lighting bands, but if you don't have enough illumination from the stage lighting and there's not going to be different color lights flashing about, then it should be took much of an issue.

Your best bet for positioning if going to be the closest you can get with the widest lens you can get. Being right up front with a 28mm lens should let you shoot at about 1/30 shutter speed. If the kids are moving a lot though, you'll probably get motion blur.

When I'm shooting bands at concert venues, I'm usually shooting at least 1/150 and ISO 1600, if not higher ISOs and higher shutter speeds. That's at places that are considered to have good professional lighting.

This was at 1/125, f/2.8, and ISO 4000; with good lighting.


Edit: And don't be scared to use higher ISO. You can probably get away with using 1600 ISO on your camera.

Brian of SHADOWS FALL???

IF so, FREAKIN' SWEET!!!

Here's a cookie:
Shadows Fall | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

For all of those recommending the OP use long lenses, do you know how hard that's going to be for him? Are you seriously that out of touch with photography that you think a Canon XTI with a 135mm or 70-300 variable aperture lens has a chance in a high school, stage lit environment?