As I settled in to listen to the group Little Dragon and take some concert photos at The Black Cat in Washington DC, I noticed I wasn\u2019t the only one with a DSLR. There were quite a few. If you\u2019ve ever met me, you know I like to talk so I had a quick conversation with most of the people that I saw with cameras and I didn\u2019t tell them, but I knew it would be rough going. I just handed them a card and told them I teach photography classes if they\u2019re ever interested.<\/p>\n
The challenges with concert photography are always light and movement; too little light and too much movement. The best way to solve that is to shoot in manual mode 100% of the time. There\u2019s really no point to even bother with the other modes. Read on to find out exactly why you MUST shoot in manual mode. But first, let\u2019s lay out what makes a good concert shot.<\/p>\n
It has to be frozen and you need a great exposure. Pretty easy, right? OK so the exposure part entails ISO, shutter speed, and aperture and I know it\u2019s not that easy. Those three settings are all you have to work with since flash isn\u2019t typically allowed in concert venues. Even if I was allowed, I wouldn\u2019t use flash anyway. That would be too easy and it would wash away the ambience. So here\u2019s where your settings need to be to get a great exposure:<\/p>\n
ISO – No mystery here… It needs to be high, so just go ahead and set it at a high ISO.
\nHow high? How nice is your camera and how much noise can you tolerate?<\/p>\n
Aperture – Again, no mystery here… go wide. But it depends on your taste, ability to focus, and the lens you have. If you tell me you only have an 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens, I\u2019ll tell you to sit back and enjoy the music. If you tell me you have a 50mm f1.8 lens, I\u2019d say let\u2019s take some shots!<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s say you dial in what you want for ISO\/aperture\/shutter speed and take a shot. Yikes! It\u2019s probably a bit dark, but it might be perfect. If so, keep on snapping! Now, the only things that can be wrong with your photo are that it can be too bright or too dark since you\u2019ve controlled all of the other settings. You can\u2019t complain about ISO, aperture, or your shutter speed because you\u2019ve picked those and you knew what you were getting into.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s too bright that\u2019s great! That means we can reel in our exposure a bit and improve on our image. What do you want? Less noise, faster shutter speed, or a smaller aperture?<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s dark (and it probably is) then you have decision to make. You need to concede on one or some of your settings. Which is going to hurt your photo the least? Wider aperture, slower shutter speed, or more noise? You make that choice. If you max out everything and you still have dark images then you need to upgrade your camera or get a lens with a wider aperture.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all bad news. That dark photo can be saved if you are shooting RAW files. If the gap isn\u2019t too wide between the exposure deficit and the extra exposure saved with a RAW file you can turn it up with a program like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t want to do it in post processing? Then that photo isn\u2019t going to happen. Why not shoot in shutter priority? Your camera already told you that you don\u2019t have enough camera\/lens to get the shot and changing modes doesn\u2019t change physics.<\/p>\n
My mentality when it comes to low light photography is get the shutter speed right and don\u2019t underexpose too much. You can bridge that gap in post processing. If you want that photo to look perfectly exposed in camera then it\u2019s going to cost you a little ISO\/aperture or shutter speed and that might just cost you that great image you saw in your head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I settled in to listen to the group Little Dragon and take some concert photos at The Black Cat in Washington DC, I noticed I wasn\u2019t the only one with a DSLR. There were quite a few. If you\u2019ve ever met me, you know I like to talk so I had a quick conversation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","pmpro_default_level":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Little-Dragon-Black-Cat-DC-2-1.jpg?fit=2000%2C1331&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6118,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117\/revisions\/6118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}