What I learned about shooting shows (C&C would be nice)

gregtallica · Apr 21, 2013

1) There is not enough light; 2) I more than likely need a flash; 3) Autofocus hates concert lighting.

I took these a few weeks ago at a gig one of my bands played. The band is called Blue-X. Music was tight, but not my style. Place emptied out for their set, bummer for them, but helped me with my "fears" of getting in and getting "the shot," though I'm not sure if I came out with very many "the shots"... hahaha.

A couple things I noticed is just how hard it is to auto-focus. I used my 35mm 1.8, shooting wide open to try to get any light without dropping my shutter speed. ISO was 3200, hence how noisy these are. I edited with LR. I don't know much about noise reduction, I tried to apply a little without going overboard, but my interpretation of adding NR is just sliding the main NR slider up in LR between 15-25.

Comments are welcome, I'd love to know what I can do better, shooting bands is something I'd really like to do more.

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cgipson1 · Apr 21, 2013

Not bad! Sharp, with good color. Once you move on to better lenses.. you will find that D7000 can focus pretty well in darker settings. Something like the 24-70 2.8 for instance! What focus mode / settings were you using? I usually prefer Spot Focus with AF-S. I will normally use Spot Meter mode also... and nail the faces.

gregtallica · Apr 21, 2013

Sharp is a nice compliment, thank you.

Let's see, I think I was mostly in continuous focus, metering I'm not sure, I imagine just the full metering.

What do you guys suggest for metering? I haven't spent much time with metering types

Light Guru · Apr 21, 2013

Did you get any photos where their eyes are open?

R3d · Apr 21, 2013

The guitar player looks like he was boring to shoot. I hate gigs where the musicians just stand around! I shot a hip-hop show that had a DJ open, and the DJ was tough to get creative shots with.

If you can, try not to cut the instruments off in framing and cropping. Music nerds like me want the whole thing! Cutting drums off to shoot the drummer is acceptable as long as his movements are well articulated.

Try and keep your backgrounds simple. Sometimes less can be a lot lot more with concert photography.

Along similar lines, try to keep the mic out of your subject's face. Everyone wants to see a frontman; nobody wants to see the back of a microphone.

I think you could get a more dramatic image out of #1 if you darkened the shadows and blacks a bit, and made it a bit more contrasty. But that's my own personal post process when editing concerts; feel free to follow your own style as well!

gregtallica · Apr 21, 2013

R3d said:
The guitar player looks like he was boring to shoot. I hate gigs where the musicians just stand around! I shot a hip-hop show that had a DJ open, and the DJ was tough to get creative shots with.

If you can, try not to cut the instruments off in framing and cropping. Music nerds like me want the whole thing! Cutting drums off to shoot the drummer is acceptable as long as his movements are well articulated.

Try and keep your backgrounds simple. Sometimes less can be a lot lot more with concert photography.

Along similar lines, try to keep the mic out of your subject's face. Everyone wants to see a frontman; nobody wants to see the back of a microphone.

I think you could get a more dramatic image out of #1 if you darkened the shadows and blacks a bit, and made it a bit more contrasty. But that's my own personal post process when editing concerts; feel free to follow your own style as well!

Thanks for the tips, man. Yeah, they were way boring too shoot. Especially after being hyped from my band playing (we don't stop moving, search "Breaux metal" on youtube for an idea). None of them really moved at all, and the singer made sure the hat covered his eyes the whole time.

Thanks for those tips though, I'm going to try to keep to keep the mic/instruments part in mind next time I shoot, I'm a guitar nerd myself (somewhere around 30 guitars) so I'm usually the same. All the thought of that ran out the door when I was shooting though.

As for the eyes, good point, I guess I didn't pay attention to that. I tried to pick my five sharpest and least red/blue washed images I could. Let me see what I can find.

And, I know that I should be getting the drummer, but his annoying 2,000 pc kit was all around him and I wasn't about to climb over the drum monitor just to reflect lights off his bald head.

R3d · Apr 21, 2013

Haha yeah, I struggle with drummers too. They're always the worst lit on stage.

CandySvoboda · Apr 21, 2013

R3d said:
Haha yeah, I struggle with drummers too. They're always the worst lit on stage.

My problem with drummers is that I'm only 5'6" and that seems to be the perfect height so I get fantastic photos of the drum kit...blocking the actual drummer. *facepalm*

Love the shots, the first one seems a bit flat. Not enough contrast on his face and arms, but that could have been the lighting.
I use the same lens for show photos, but on a D5100...and usually with worse lighting than what you had to work with. I think you did very well, I dig all of the shots. I definitely see what you mean when you say they were boring to shoot. Whenever that happens I try to get interesting angles to make it a bit more...well...interesting, :lol:

1) There is not enough light; 2) I more than likely need a flash; 3) Autofocus hates concert lighting.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Though I REFUSE to use flash during shows because I think it kills the mood of the set.

R3d · Apr 22, 2013

I abhor flash at shows. It ruins the stage atmosphere and distracts the performers.

I also have started using manual focus, just because auto focus is so bad. It's slower obviously, but it's worth it to set up the shot you want instead of hunting for so long you miss it.

Candy, I got lucky shooting at House of Blues the other week that the drummers weren't on risers. That made life so much easier.

Universeal · Apr 22, 2013

1 picture, nothing happens, 2 it looks like he swallow the mic, 3 nothing happens, 4 something happens and you have lower right a distracting thing, 5 bad angle and kinda nothing happens. If you get that try using a slower shutter speed slow enough that your subject is in focus and his hand/s are not so that it will be some motion. The singer gave you good emotion in 2 but you were in the wrong spot. If you didn't start shooting all members of the band first or at some point where most of them are doing something. Auto-focus on that camera i know nothing about but it should be good enough to focus. 3200iso don't worry about noise i see that it's good enough.