I recently was asked to review some concert photos that a fan from Flickr had posted. I noticed that he was shooting at ISO 2000, which gave him noisy and under saturated grayish tones to his photos. I think one myth that people think about shooting concerts is that you have to have the fastest lens so you can shoot at f/1.2-1.8 and 1/250th, or shoot at high ISOs. Not True.

My standard setting for a concert before it even starts is (usually) around ISO 250, f/4 and 1/160 if I’m using my 50mm (which is on the majority of a show).  I’m ALWAYS in manual mode at a concert, (whereas almost any other time I shoot with natural light I’m on Aperture priority).  One of the most important skills you need to getting good concert shots is knowing how to change your camera settings without taking your eye away from the viewfinder. That means being able to change every setting from ISO, to White balance, to aperture and shutter speed.

I am constantly changing settings based upon what I’m seeing on stage. If the light guy is shining bright lights into the audience and there is a chance I’ll get some cool star-bursts I’ll bump the aperture as high as I think I can get it without being underexposed.

In this photo, I noticed the light reflecting off of the sequins on this dancer’s hat.  I took a few shots at different apertures, checked my display, saw that f/5 was giving me a good exposure and still getting a nice star-burst, and then I did a nice burst of about 20 photos while the dancer held this pose at the end of a song.

This was taken at ISO 250, f/5, 1/200th

You don’t always get lucky with stage lights, and sometimes a guitarist will step out to the front of the stage to take a solo, stepping out of the spotlight so that all you have is rimlight.  That’s what happened here:

As soon as he stepped out of the spotlights I dropped my aperture to 3.5, my shutter speed down to 1/160th, and my ISO up to 350.

The lighting on his shirt, his hair and his guitar are all great, but I actually had to do some work in Photoshop to bring out the details in his face.

Here is a photo that I almost deleted when I saw it on my camera’s screen, but when I got it home on the imac it looked amazing. I was shooting up at this singer as he was walking by me, my camera is less than a meter from his leg, and the blue light was doing a sweep that hit my lens just at the right moment. The flare rings make what might have been a throw away shot, one of my favorites of the night. This is an example of pure luck:

The last photo I want to talk about here is this one:

This shot is very unique for me two reasons: 1, I hardly ever take photos of dancers. 2, I hardly ever convert concert shots to B&W.

I’ll go through these differences in this photo and why I chose to do what I did, and how these choices produced my favorite photo I’ve taken in a long time.

1: As soon as I saw these dancers (there are 4 of them) I threw on the Tokina 11-16mm. I knew that they would be choreographed into some cool poses and I wanted to capture the full scene here, rather than just one dancer. Also, dancers usually are concentrating too hard to show much emotion on their face, so closeups of their faces are boring.

2: I went black and white here for two reasons, the first was that the dancers were wearing black and white, and the stage light was white, so the random other bits of color coming through (the gold on the Marshall stack) became distractions. The second reason is that often in these very harsh lighting conditions (Super bright directional light, surrounded by a dark stage) black and white processing turns flat dull light into something we can work with. The entire shot is backlit by those 4 big harsh white lights, whereas most concert shots have multiple colors of lights coming from all angles. Notice how you can see the actual line of light coming from the bulb, and how the light gets absorbed so quickly by the darkness just past the dancers. You can’t see that nearly as clearly in the color version.

Because the stage was backlit I had to open up to f/2.8 (the largest the Tokina goes) and risk blowing out part of the shot, which is what happened in the top left corner, however because it’s black and white, it just comes out as a white part of the shot rather than the washed out loss of color it would be in the color version.

So in wrapping up, my advice: 1. Know how to change your camera settings with your eyes closed. 2. Change your settings often while shooting. After a while it becomes second nature as to when you should change certain settings to get the results you want. 3. Don’t be afraid to take risks in post. A dull photo might look better in B&W.

Tags: concert, Concert Photography, dancers, Hongdae, live music, live music photography, Michael Jackson tribute, Music, Seoul