DSLR Photography Forum

Does anyone have any tips for photographing stage events such as concerts, musicals and so forth? Those type of situations are usually dim or patchily lit. How do you control motion blur?

I'm talking about photos such as these.

Also in using a big flash, colours often come out muted. Any suggestions there?

I've been shooting bands in nightclubs for years. First thing I learned was, if I wanted consistantly good results, shoot only in clubs with good lighting

Those photos you linked above appear to be shot in fairly large venues, which will necessarily have pretty strong lighting (the dancers in the second and third shots are in spotlight, for example). Things have to be really well-lit for the audience that's further away.

The two main things under your control are lens speed (okay, as under your control as budget will allow) and film/sensor ISO rating. Remember an f/2 lens will let you use a 1/125 shutter where an f/4 will only allow you 1/30 on the same shot. Back in the day, I used to shoot Kodak Ektar 1000 as much as possible in clubs - it had grain and saturation as good as any ISO400, but allowed an extra 1-1/3 stops of exposure. With my DRebel now, I usually shoot ISO800 in clubs and get great results.

I'll usually try to combine amient/stage lighting with flash, something that's particularly easy with the 420EX dedicated flash: I set the camera to manual, aperture wide-open, shutter generally around 1/60 (little slower if the lighting is particularly poor, but 1/60 calms the bulk of nasty motion blur), and let the E-TTL metering handle the flash. I also usually use a bounce diffuser on the flash if the stage background is really dark (all that blackness makes the E-TTL overcompensate sometimes) or if I'm shooting really close.

When it works well, you get not only a good balance of object colors AND lighting colors, but the shutter allows just a little motion blur to give a feeling of "action" while the flash freezes the "foreground" picture well.
Some examples are Molten Image http://www.moltenimage.com +

Soundy Wrote:Some examples are Molten Image http://www.moltenimage.com +

BTW, that splash screen shot there, that's one of my all-time faves, and it was a mistakte: the flash was armed and ready to go, but because of a cracked hotshoe, sometimes didn't fire. This was one of those times... fortunately!

Soundy covered it pretty well, imho.

Hi

Gosh thats a very all post!! why did you ask him and not me? anyway....

First if you shoot on a prfesional show, thats it with on reharsels or during the show, you are not allowed flash. also flash kills the stage lights. so you need to compansete with faster film.

If you are allowed flash, ask if you can shoot with flash before hand with the stage manager or company manager or who ever is in charge. be prepare with faster film anyway. there always say no.

Faster lenses F2.8 minimun! slow shutter speeds....not recomended.

oooh my tip if you are going to be in one place as normaly is done, take a monopod. if is a concert take minimun gear as posible as they allowed only the first 3 songs of the concert. thats the normal in any concert.

uuhmmm what else?

a pix with flash?...let me look....uuhm I can not find one. but this two that they use for a poster.