[rmtagg]

I have several firsts coming up this weekend. First on Sat I am shooting a car show and then on Sunday I am shooting a live band.

Never having done either before does anyone have any tips or suggestions for me? I would sure appreciate some if any one has the time to share I promise to post pics no matter how they come out

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Last edited by rmtagg; 05-12-2008 at 04:24 PM.

[Arpe]

Fast lenses.
Experiment a bit, you should have the time at both to play around eg. slow shutter speeds with the band. Different angles.
If you're the "official" photog, try and get something that says so, a tag or whatever, so you can push in.

[rmtagg]

Fast lenses.
Experiment a bit, you should have the time at both to play around eg. slow shutter speeds with the band. Different angles.
If you're the "official" photog, try and get something that says so, a tag or whatever, so you can push in.

Thanks Any idea what a nice lens would be to have for shooting bands? Hm, I am not ready to sell any body parts to get suggested lens so recos keeping that in mind,

[deaner]

Rosemary: You can check my flickr photostream: flickr dot com/photos/deaner66. I was in a similiar situation as you are. Lucky for me, the band members are all good friends of mine. So I had the luxury of being able to throw up a couple of light stands on the stage and gelling my flashes.

Many concert photog purists boo-hah the idea of using a flash in a club. But it all depends on your situation. If you are allowed the flash, and the lighting in the club is bad--and many are--use a gel over the flash to add some color and to deaden the blast of light from your flash.

If your flash isn't allowed, that's cool too. Your options get a little tighter, however. Use your f/1.7 50mm as much as possible. Steady your camera as best you can. Usually tripods are out of the question. The darkness of smaller clubs makes camera shake your enemy. And good luck trying to find a musician who plays still. But you can find some good shots. Take a lot of 'em. That's a key.

A few weeks ago, I did the flash-less gig photos in a poorly lit room. The only stage lights were red and an odd yellow and blue. You'll find red lights make face tones disappear. And red seems to be the dominant color in bar stage lights. Smaller bars, anyway.

If the club has poor lighting, you may find you'll be forced to shoot ISO 800 or higher, f/1.7 and a horribly slow shutter speed. Like 1/15th or worse. Again, it depends on the venue.

Just don't get discouraged. Try your hardest to remember what works and what doesn't. And take a LOT of shots. Worst case, you get five or six awesome shots out of hundreds.

I'd love to see what you come up with.

Steve

[TourDeForce]

Use your f/1.7 50mm as much as possible.

I'd love to see what you come up with.

If you have a little room to work with, that Tamron 90mm f/2.5 might come in handy as well. Tripod this one. Without availability of flashes on/near stage, this is gonna be a challenge to get a photo that isn't blurred.

[deaner]

If you have a little room to work with, that Tamron 90mm f/2.5 might come in handy as well. Tripod this one. Without availability of flashes on/near stage, this is gonna be a challenge to get a photo that isn't blurred.

Agreed. Didn't see that one. That gives you a little more room too. Change your angle too. Get low, high, switch sides of the stage. If it seems like trouble, try it. It might just work.

[MJB DIGITAL]

you can look at my flickr as well (link in my signature)

i believe you will find 'live music' under the 'magazine assignments' collection in the right hand column.

feel free to pm me with any questions.

mitch

[Alan]

I have shot several motorbike shows, with some cars on the side. Your 18-55 mm is your best bet, use flash all of the time on the TAv setting on your K10. Set yur ISo on Auto but make sure it covers the whole range to 1600. Adjust your shutter speed and / or aperture between shots to keep your ISO around the 400 mark and take lots of pics. The cars won't move and they don't complain. Another thing to vary and check the effect of change is the number of sensors you are using to measure the available light.

[vievetrick]

I would also suggest for the bands you use spopt metering. As for shoting cars if outside I would suggest a Circular Polarizing filiter to help with glare. Just my $.02

[KjetilH]

Spot metering is a must, which I found out when watching a friends band playing, and I got my hands on a Ixus 65, with pretty limited options available. Even though the shots were at ISO 1600 (=terrible noise), and somewhat blurry, they did have much more 'feel' to them than the 'official' photographer, which used a Olympus E-300/330 and a dedicated flash. From the other shots I have seen from the place, he is using auto, and TTL. Sigh. I wanted to take the camera from him, and say him a few words about bounce flash. His photos didn't look awful, but they weren't really natural.
(At least I'm going to try to talk to them if they could need a photographer.)

Use RAW format, in case you have to edit the colours (weird scene light), and to get a little more "room" when postprocessing. Also, try to get the white balance in the room right, so the AWB doesn't get messed up all the time if you shoot JPEG.

[user440]

For the car show, try to go at a time when the crowds are minimal such as during setup or shortly after. Also, be mindful of glare and reflections off of the cars which could cause distraction or hot spots.

[Entropy]

I wanted to take the camera from him, and say him a few words about bounce flash. His photos didn't look awful, but they weren't really natural.
(At least I'm going to try to talk to them if they could need a photographer.)

Use RAW format, in case you have to edit the colours (weird scene light), and to get a little more "room" when postprocessing. Also, try to get the white balance in the room right, so the AWB doesn't get messed up all the time if you shoot JPEG.

I don't know about the venue you were at, but most of the concert venues I've been at, the ceiling is black. This seems intentional at most such venues. It makes bounce flash hard (if not impossible).

The best one can do in many cases is an on-flash diffuser such as from Lumiquest.

To mitigate the damage from on-camera nonbounced flash though, try to let in as much ambient as possible, but when mixing concert lighting with flash, you ABSOLUTELY must CTO gel your flash so its color temp is close to that of ambient!

Otherwise the color balance will be completely whacked and unfixable.

[KjetilH]

You are right about the usual black ceiling. The one I was referring to, was a improvised scene, where the ceiling was white.

(And, if it didn't get clear of my post, TTL doesn't leave much to the ambient light.)

[dopeytree]

Don't listen to people about not using slow shutter speeds, thats how you get photos like these!!!

Gallery

Mostly on a k10d with the 50mm f1.8 but on about f4 so you could use the kit lens too, shutter speed is from 1/60th to 1/20th all with shake reduction on but just make sure you can hold the camera sturdy.

Dont go above iso 400 because the images will look shit when you print them!!! no matter how good they look on the screen!!!!!!

Just remember that you can't judge your exposure by the photo on the screen on your camera. It'll have alot more detail and usually be a tad brighter so remember that when adjustign exposures. Its pretty much a case of guessing if your going to use auto use spot metering as its more accurate.

Please post any questions and lets see the results later please

[dopeytree]

if you want to use flash use curtain trail as this will pull in the ambient light and give a much more pleasing result and use a slow shutter speed