Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Reeve Carney, Lee's Palace

I do quite a lot of concert photography and enjoy the challenge. This was at Lee's Palace where I've been to many times before but never used by DSLR there. If you have a DSLR and not happy with the results from your point-and-shoot or smartphone, it's always a good idea to try and find out the photography policy before going. Sometimes you may be stopped and not allowed in with your camera. However, finding out the policy is not always easy and many times is dependent on the band, not the venue. Having the right equipment and settings if critical to capturing good shots at a concert. I've used my external Nikon Speedlight flash a few times, but it can be a little distracting and can draw attention on you (like the auto focus lighting aid, which I also turn off), plus it doesn't really allow you to capture the mood of stage lighting. However, stage lighting is good and bad, especially in a small venue. Sometimes it may be bright enough to light the lead singer, but many times isn't good enough to light the other musicians, like the drummer.

For this concert I used my 50mm f1.8 lens (aka the "nifty fifty"), set my ISO to 1600 and used the manual settings, making fine adjustments throughout the show. You need a very fast lens, but shooting wide open at f1.8 makes focusing quite difficult, so I was using f2.2-f2.8 with shutter speeds of 1/50-1/80.

One other thing to keep in mind with concert photography is the performance itself. Shooting at the necessary lower shutter speeds makes it quite difficult to capture fast moving performers (although blurred action shots also capture the mood quite well), so timing is critical in capturing the money shots, so I take lots of shots. Plus some performers are just more photographic than others, their movements, their facial expressions, their clothing. This shot is unedited and I'm pretty pleased at capturing a classic guitar move and Reeve was a very photogenic subject.

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