Shooting Rock Bands

[skida]

I am waiting for my order of Neopan 1600 to arrive and I am intending shooting a few band shots at a local pub, something I have never done before. The pub has a good set of stage lights and I intend shooting without flash through a 135mm prime lens and/or 100-200 zoom. I am wondering if anyone here has experience, and if they can give me an idea of the approximate apertures I will be using at 125th of a second. I have a light meter but I think that if I try taking an incident reading from the singer's face, half way through a song, I will end up with a Gibson Les Paul inserted where the sun don't shine.

Would I get an accurate reading from the on board meter of the OM10 or XG-M do you think?

[Orio]

The camera settings depend on the lighting. They can vary from almost unshootable to having to stop down to f/5.6 depending on how close and strong and many the lights.
So impossible to give a recipe.
There are two basic situations in a concert:
1- lighting is fixed (does not change) 2- lighting varies.
In situation 1, you can either take an average measurement at the beginning of the show, then set ISO and aperture manually in a way that you obtain 1/250 shutter time (ideally) or 1/125 (more realistically). Or, you can use AV mode, always with the intent of getting a shutter time around 1/125 or 1/250
In situation 2, there is not much that you can do, because one moment you have the musician in the dark and the moment after it is flooded by a bright yellow spotlight... so again the suggestion is to use AV mode and set an aperture and ISO that provide you with a 1/125 shutter time even in the darkest moments. You will not get perfect results except occasionally, but with the flexibility of RAW you can rescue many of the imperfect files.
Requirements:
a- always shoot RAW
b- always use lens hoods
c- try to keep a balance between aperture and ISO - example: f/2.8 with 800 ISO is a good balanced setting; f/5.6 with 3200 ISO is unbalanced (penalizes ISO too much) and f/1.4 with 200 ISO is also unbalanced (penalizes aperture too much)

[skida]

Thanks Orio. Your post tells me that what I want to do should be possible, but I shall be shooting on film exclusively (Neopan 1600) so raw shots rather than RAW. I think the lighting will be fairly constant and hopefully I should get some "keepers".

[philslizzy]

good luck doing these photos, in fact you've probably done them now.

In my day (the 70's) I took photos of every band I went to see, mostly in concert halls. I was lucky because the first time I saw a band I was allowed on stage while they were setting up, I took an incident light reading of the light which will point at the singer. and some other readings too. You can take a reading from the palm of your hand if you cant get an incident reading.

The important thing to remember is that the singer, guitarist or whoever it is will have the spotlight on them at some point. This is the light you must use to base your readings on otherwise the exposure can be blown out. Whole stage lighting, because of the amount of lights, used is practically the same brightness as the singer's spotlight. So using a fixed exposure will get great results (in my experience) about 85% of the time with the other 15% mostly due to lighting changes just before the shutter button is pressed!

Colour temperature: Nowadays they use LED lights (at least for smaller gigs) if so use daylight but for bulb lights use tungsten. I always wondered whether it made much difference seeing as the lights were all different colours, but it does and some of my earlier photos where very warm. But with film the only way to change the colour balance was to use a filter -1.5 stops or use tungsten film, -1.5 stops

I was using GAF 500 slide film (ISO 500) the fastest colour film available to me (in the mid 70's). My meter said EV10 (1/250th at f4) I love exposure values (EV's). That translates as about 1/250th at between f5.6 and f8 with 1600ISO. Whatever the film, I always used EV10 Iso100 = 1/60 f4, 200 1/125 f4 etc.

Modern digital cameras (high end ones anyway) have pretty good multipoint metering systems I have taken some crackers on my Canon G9

Here are some photos under different lighting conditions of the same gig. Taken in 1979 I used my Olympus OM1 with a sigma 135 f1.8 lens, on Ektachrome 200 (daylight) using my EV10 rule.

These are straight scans of the slides with no post processing apart from resizing them.

Yes they are a little soft but its hard to keep in focus at f1.8

[Lloydy]

Great pictures of Thin Lizzie, the last one is classic. They might not be razor sharp, like we would expect today with high ISO digital camera's, but they capture the atmosphere and aren't 'clinical', which can spoil a good rock band picture. There's energy in those old film pictures that lives on. I love them.

[martinsmith99]

Softness aside, those look great. I like the last one best, as it show's Phil's face whilst Scott's and Gary's are obscured. It's easy to see how you chose your forum name.

I shoot bands mainly on digital, but I use flash for some pics and also a slow shutter speed on others to show movement. I use focal lengths anywhere between 17-200 mm. I think the key is variety. Also, speak to local bands before they go on and check with them if it's ok. My experience is, most will encourage you as long as they get the pics.

[philslizzy]

Thanks guys, a couple of lizzy fans eh! Well spotted Martin re my username. I could easily have chosen Maiden, Priest, Earth Wind & Fire or the Rubettes (seriously) photos but lizzy were at hand. Its good when you've got the run of the place, the balcony from which I took the last photo was out of bounds but nobody minded. The shot was a classic showing the band's - or rather Phil's - interaction with the rapturous audience. I really summed up what Lizzy were about. I did take several, but with a digital camera you could take dozens.

I don't take too many photos these days at gigs because security won't allow 'professional type' cameras in, so you're stuck with a digital compact with a too-slow reaction time on the shutter. Exposure wise modern digitals are spot on I've never had a badly exposed shot using digital, but a lot are blurred due to slow shutter speeds (f4 - f5.6 lenses). In addition to that, you are standing in a moving crowd at most smallish venues. I use my phone nowadays for 'record' type shots. I record bands mostly and stick the mp3's on their fan pages. They like that type of thing (surprisingly) - well most do.

Thanks again