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.

I decided on this one:

http://bit.ly/eT0DK

Just gotta scrape together the cash to buy it!

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!

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