First go shooting a band.

Bios. · Jan 30, 2011

Went to see my friends band play and took my camera. My first time shooting at a gig, I'm more into nature photography. These didn't really come out how I wanted.

I was using a sigma 10-20mm, canon 50mm 1.8 and a 430ex on a 500d. I found the sigma too short and the 50mm a bit too long but I dont have anything to cover the focal lengths inbetween.

Any comments would be appreciated.

There's a couple more on my flickr.

Frequency · Jan 31, 2011

Nice attempts; third is my choice

Regards

e.rose · Jan 31, 2011

My guess by looking at 1, 3, and 5 is that your shutter speed was too slow. (Also, please remember to number your images so that my feeble brain doesn't have to attempt to count anything moments after waking up :lol:

). I think you also just missed focus on 5. It's in the crook of his arm.

As far as the focal length is concerned, I think these look fine... why did you feel that they your lenses were of inadequate focal lengths?

Bios. · Jan 31, 2011

Cheers for the comments.

Yeah number 5 is OOF and blurred but I liked the colours and composition. With 1, 2 and 3 I was using flash and dragging the shutter trying to get some motion however I was having a hard time balancing the flash and available light. When I have tried dragging the shutter before, not at gigs, I have managed to get people nicely crisp and have the background blurred and colourful however this time I found it to be the other way round. I think it's because spotlights pick out the band members and the background is dark. Also I think if I increased my flash output and wiggled the camera a bit this might have helped.

I think with a bigger venue the focal lengths would have been fine but it was really hard to get close enough with the 10-20mm becase there were speakers and stuff in the way and hard to get far enough away with the 50mm because of walls and people. I think a 30mm lens would have been useful.

It's much more stressful shooting bands than nature but it's all good experience and I think I'll feel a little more comfortable next time.

bigtwinky · Jan 31, 2011

Glad you are taking it in stride. Your images are not bad at all for a first time.

Lens selection can be a pain in shows. An ultra wide can be amazing if you can get right in front of the stage (or even on stage!) and give some really cool angles and line converging in the image that bands like. A 50 is great up close to get head shots, but it can be a bit tight, specially on a crop camera.

Zooms and high ISO are a great combo for concerts. Or a fast 50 and some room to work with.