Concert shots look so easy when you see them in magazines, don’t they? Try to take one and you’ll see what the artist Georgia O’Keefe meant when she said, “The cliffs over there, you look at it and it’s almost painted for you, you think until you try.”

If you walk away from this article with one thing let it be this: Cameras need light in order to record an image. The less light there is, the more difficult time the camera will have.

Getting a good concert shot is all about the lighting.

However, you must choose between flash and available light. Let’s explore both.

Flash photography at a concert

Let’s start by bursting your bubble: Even though using flash is the easier way to get the shot, there are a couple drawbacks:

• It may not be allowed in the room
• It destroys the mood created by all the stage lighting

Flash is good for freezing action, however. Most cameras automatically set a relatively fast shutter speed (perhaps 1/200 second) in flash mode.

Available light photography at a concert

Ok, first we must realize that most good published performance photographs are shot with available light. It captures the mood, and often the drama of the performance. Secondly we must realize that it is not that easy to make a successful concert photograph. However, here are a few pointers:

Try a test shot with your camera in auto mode.

You might get lucky. You can also try setting your camera for “theatre” or “party” mode, but chances are you’ll just get something that looks like this blurred orangy shot of Shonen Knife’s bass player. If your camera’s auto modes don’t magically give you what you want, you’ve got to go to the next level and start thinking about what you’re doing. The following steps are basic, yet very important for existing light photography.

• Use the highest ISO (light sensitivity) setting available on your camera.

For most digital point-and-shoots, this is ISO 400. For most DSLRs, this is 1600. The DSLR’s image sensor is much more light sensitive (can capture an image in dim light) that that of a digital point-and-shoot.

• Aperture wide — spotlights aren’t enough !
  

While spotlights appear to illuminate the performers intensely, the light is relatively dim compared to daylight. Therefore, you probably want to shoot with your camera’s aperture set wide open, to let in as much light as possible. For a typical digital camera lens, this might be f3.5. To complicate matters, spotlights create such a dramatic difference in light intensity between the performer and the rest of your scene that most auto exposure cameras tend to average the exposure, which washes out the brightly lit performer.

The Solution: Crank your camera’s +/- Av or Ev setting down to -2 and see what happens. Make a few test exposures and adjust accordingly.

• Shutter Speed

See the blur of the bass player’s guitar? This is due to the fact that the shutter speed was relatively slow (perhaps 1/8 second)–either I, the bass player, or both moved during the exposure! An 1/8 second may be the fastest you can shoot under a particular available light setting.

The Solution: Study the performers and try to catch them when they’re least likely to be moving. This could be between songs or while they’re catching their breath between song verses. This is what I did to get the B/W shot at the top of this page. (You may notice that the top of this photo is sharper than the bottom–this is because I was shooting up, focused on the woman’s face. A wide aperture causes a shallow depth of field, meaning fewer things in the flight path will be in focus.)

• Activate your camera’s image stabilization

Most people can effectively hand hold a 50 mm lens at a shutter speed of about 1/50 second. Concert light shutter speeds can be much slower than this! You risk blurring the image if you use a shutter speed less than 1/50 second. Image stabilization might allow you to hand hold the same shot at slower speeds, say 1/30 or even 1/15 of a second, but doesn’t guarantee a sharp image.

The major advantage of digital cameras is that they shorten the learning curve by giving you instant feedback! You can see immediately (in the playback viewfinder) whether or not you captured the image successfully. The trick is to know how to adjust your camera’s settings to get the best shot!