Photography question- About shooting in the dark with no pod

[digredi]

I am going to see Bad Religion tonight and if I can sneak the cam in I want pics. Lighting will be poor at best, and I will have nowhere to set a tripod, so the pics will be hand held... I will I assume set it to Apature Priority, And have the ISO bumped as high as it will go (800), but what about apature? Would it be better to have it wide open (f/10ish) or opposite (f/3-4ish)? I am pretty sire wide open is best, but I just wanna ask and check first...



Thanks.
It's on a Nikon Coolpix 4500 btw...

 

[ksmattfish]

The smaller the f/number, the larger the aperture (wider). So f/3-4ish is wider open than f/10. If you are more than 30' or 40' from your subject then you should be able to include the focus setting infinity in your DOF, making it just fine to use wide apertures.

 

[JPPLAY]

800 iso going to be very grainy.

 

[markc]

800 iso going to be very grainy.

Yeah it is, but unfortunately you have to take your hits somewhere. Grain/noise, depth-of-field, or motion blur... something has to give. It's usually two of the three in order to minimize the one that's most important to you. For most it's reducing motion blur.

 

[ajmall]

with film, i was recommended shooting with fuji 800 from someone who used to work in nightclubs for ministry of sound.

i recommend going for the faster ISO and as small an F number as u can like 2.8 (grain looks better than blurred images)