A Beginner’s Guide To Shooting Concert Photography
One major skill that I’m relieved to have learned while in college is how to take good quality pictures. One of our ideas with Assault was to get pictures of our shirts on rock bands rather than on stock mock ups like every other apparel company. We felt it was the one thing to set us aside in a small way from everyone else that would also be a great way to network with bands that we were fans of.
Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that live concert photography is probably one of the hardest forms of photography. You can’t depend on your camera’s automatic mode if you want your photos to look professionally done. You can’t use a point and shoot camera. After a few practice shows though, and with plenty of practice and tips from our friends, we were finally able to nail down our process which we’re going to share with everyone, cause we’re awesome.
Lookout! Giants at the Metro Chicago
Lookout! Giants at the Metro Chicago
Account for lighting & other variables
If you’ve been to Assault’s Online Store you know that we try to get photos of people wearing our clothing during rock shows where there are any number of variables that you can’t account for. Such as:
- The crowd
- The amount of lights
- The layout of the venue
- The variation in color and intensity of the lights
To help you get started doing your own photography under these conditions I’ve prepared a few tips and techniques that will help take your photos from sorority party-girl self shots to Rolling Stone worthy concert photography. (Maybe not THAT good, but close)
As always, we’ll try to accomplish quality results as cheaply as possible.
Equipment: Digital SLR Camera
Your little party camera, aka the point and shoot, isn’t going to cut it. I’m sure it’s got plenty o’ megapixels, but the most important thing is that you get a large image sensor to capture more color information. I started off with a Nikon D70 DSLR that I bought off my friend Dennis Burnett for $300 bucks. It’s older than my little sister’s point and shoot, but the photos still look ten times better.
If you shop around I’m sure you can find a decent used SLR. Try Craigslist, or Ebay. (Does anyone use Ebay anymore besides Nigerian scammers?)
Not only is the camera body important, but it’s important to have a decent lens on your camera. I stuck with the zoom lens that came with my camera to start, but eventually purchased a Nikon 50mm prime lens to help in the low lighting situations.
Equipment: External Flash
A Hero Named Hope live show at the Metro Chicago
The quickest way to make your photos look like an amateur Kenny Powers photo shoot is to only use the built in flash. Buy a decent external flash. You’ll be able to shoot from further away. You can also get a better amount of light around your subject. Along with a softer light, you’ll also be able to adjust the intensity of the light so your shots aren’t washed out and overexposed.
I bought the Quantaray QDC 900WA for my Nikon D70 for $99 bucks. It looks like you can buy the same one online for the same price. Google it.
External flashes can also have a diffusion cover of some sort put on them to reduce over exposure and ensure that your subjects are softly lit.
Chris Huebner from the band, From the Broken
Camera Setup
Put your camera in manual mode. When I first started I asked my friend Dane Sponberg for some settings to start out at. Here’s what he had to say:
Try using these camera settings as a starting point:
- 800 ISO
- F4 or 4.5
- 1/30th of a second shutter speed
- Flash set to +1
If the stage lights aren’t coming through, either bump your ISO up and turn your flash down, or leave the shutter open longer, like 1/10th of a second. Just watch that, cause the longer the shutter is open, the blurrier it will get.
A few additional pointers, tips and tricks
A few of my personal additional settings/tips that you may also benefit you are to:
- Shoot in uncompressed raw mode
- Try not to overexpose, digital imagery picks up more color information in the blacks which is more easily fixed in post than an overexposed shot
- Bring an extra CF or SD card
- Charge your damn camera. I can’t count how many times I’ve been burned on this
- Use Lithium batteries in your flash so it charges up faster
- If your camera is older like mine, clean off the contacts with rubbing alcohol to ensure the external flash will work
- Shoot LOTS of images. Many will not turn out.
Some final thoughts
If you’d like to see how most of my early photo sets turned out you can look at our Flickr Photo feed. The most important thing to do when getting the shots in the show is to make sure you are shooting in NEF Raw mode so you can edit the files later in Photoshop.
The more color information you have the easier it is to make your photos look even better in post. My next tutorial will cover how to edit the photos and color correct them to make them look even better.
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About the Author
Tim is the co-owner of Assault, and tends to think he can party twice as hard as anyone. Follow him on twitter @assault Email this Author | All posts by tim
Great article. Can’t count how many times you view friends photos when they went to a concert and they are all blury. And even for more experienced photographers it is still a good resource and reminder.
a few things i dissagree on, when shooting NEVER use flash, 1. it takes the atmosphere outta the gig ,a 2. the band members hate… be respectful
buy a good prime lens, you can pick up a 50mm F1.8 for $150, then you can shoot at around 1/125 and not have your photos come out blurry if you were shooting at 1/30.. if you do shoot at 1/60 or lower, set your camera to speed burst and the middle of say 5 will be sharp
and use spot metering
@tiam
I was told to get a quality lens so that I wouldn’t need the flash, but unfortunately I was using the one that came with the camera because we haven’t got the funds yet for a 300-500 dollar lens. So you are 100% correct there.
We use the flash at a pretty low power–1/16th power so that most of the time they don’t even notice it because it’s just their to match the venue lighting.
So far no band has told me that the flash bothered them. Thanks for the additional tips though!
per @tiam’s suggestion I’m going to check into getting a prime lens as well and do another post on this in the future.
I decided on this one:
http://bit.ly/eT0DK
Just gotta scrape together the cash to buy it!
These are great tips!
I recently started doing a lot of concert photography and I can only agree with you: cute little point and shot camera are useless! I use my Nikon D-60 and it takes great pictures.
Some venues are very picky about cameras, let alone flash. But I usually get good results making the most use of the existing light.
Shoot a lot of pics… couldn’t agree more! I have about 200 for each show, which I usually narrow down to 50-60 because some are blurry or of poor quality.