Camera Labs

Hello.
i have a nikon d3000 and nikon 18-55 vr lens.
which settings do you believe that are proper for a concert?
i want the colours to be as they will be on the stage and i think that the AUTO setting is not proper in this case...
please help me

Shooting in concerts is going to be tough, its one of the hardest things to do well in photography, and not something Im personally involved with, but Ill give you some pointers.

You're going to want to be in fully manual (M) mode. This is because if you are letting the camera set the exposure it may well be thrown off by the spotlights or flashes. So you are going to need to find the settings yourself and keep them like that.

To do this Id recommend starting wide open (f5.6 on your lens) and at an ISO of around 3200, maybe 6400. The reason for this is that you are going to need a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. Id recommend trying to stay faster than 1/200, maybe dropping to 1/100 at the very slowest.

So take a shot at ISO 3200, f5.6 and 1/200. Then review the photo. Check the histogram, as the screen isnt 100% accurate. From this decide whether you need to increase or decrease your ISO or other settings.

Id shoot in RAW so you dont have to worry about your white balance and picture controls at the time. This will give you the "colours" you are after. But remember if doing this that you need to add things like noise reduction, sharpening etc in post production.

Also shoot in continuous autofocus mode. Id set it to AF-C (as in continuous) and Dynamic area (tends to work better for me than 3D tracking)

That would be a good place to start in my opinion.

Sorry if this is either over your head or stating the obvious!

Jeremy

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Nikon D5000 and D300 with 12-24mm, 35mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4, 60mm f2.8 Macro, 18-200mm, 17-55mm f2.8 (all Nikon)

thank you very much for your reply.
i will check the options you told me and hope to find the best for best photos.
thank you again for your time

I'm a concert photographer, and Jeremy makes some good points.

However, I still use my camera's light meter when shooting, albeit a bit differently than you might expect. I've set my camera body to manual shutter speed and aperture control, but have auto-ISO turned on. That way, the camera automatically boosts or decreases the ISO, depending on the amount of available light.

Different focal lengths however have different effects on your exposure metering. For instance, I tend to dial in a -0.7 stops exposure compensation for my 50mm lens (fixed focal), but a whopping +1.3 for my 10mm fisheye (extreme wideangle).

You'll have to live with the fact that your metering system will mess up as soon as you are in the direct light of a backlight spot, something you can only compensate slightly with spot metering (I use matrix metering with spot metering mapped to a seperate button).

As far as autofocus goes, I use that mode that's like single point AF, but which sometimes "borrows" data from surrounding AF points when your subject suddenly moves out of your composition. It's the second mode from the bottom upI think.
That way, I always know where I'm focusing, and my lens doesn't hunt as much when the artist moves to fast for me to track.

Still, even with comprehension of all this techno mumble jumble, the D3000 with an 18-55 is not very well suited for concert photography (especially not the smaller gigs). I'd recommend you get the new AF-S (mind that "S"!) 50mm F/1.8, or if that's not available, the 35mm F/1.8.

I've just gotten back from 3 days of concert shooting, and building stages/festivals, with next to no sleep, so excuse the spelling errors.


P.S. In a perfect world I'd be shooting at 1/250th all the time, but the simple truth is I really don't have sufficient light (the fate of a concert photographer). I tend to find 1/80th is quite acceptable, especially for "microphone" shots. For obvious reasons, this will not as well for jumping punk rockers.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

I have order a 70-300 nikon lens but i m afraid that it wont be here till the day of the concert.

photography is just a hobby for me and i can t stand to buy another lens now.

thank you very much for your informations

For what it's worth, both lenses I mentioned are relatively cheap

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

To add to this, if you had an f1.4 lens, you would be shooting 3 stops brighter, so could lower your ISO from 3200 or 6400 (quite noisy) to 400 or 800 which is pretty noise free on the D3000.

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Nikon D5000 and D300 with 12-24mm, 35mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4, 60mm f2.8 Macro, 18-200mm, 17-55mm f2.8 (all Nikon)

I was shooting pictures non-flash at a wedding for fun (I'm not an official photographer, so I can do what I please), and even with a 1.4 50mm -1 Ev, it's a pain on that dance floor. I can't fathom how you do it.

On another note, everyone's assuming this concert is indoors or at night.

you need a fast lens...you can't shoot concerts with the kit lens,no matter how hard you try. you should get the 35mm F/1.8 at least

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Gear: Nikon D80, 18-105mm, 35mm F/1.8, 85mm F/1.8, SB-600
Visit my work here

You can shoot with the kitlens Razvan, but you'll be severely limited in your options/creative freedom.

Lagnificent: Stage lights help, and being friends with the lighting engineers helps too

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Recently went to a Take That concert with my 70-300 VR, and got some really great photos from the event!

Most were taken with manual or aperture, i also used auto iso for some, with a cap of ISO800, and a target shutter speed of 1/125s. I also found, as mentioned earlier, that spot or centre weighted metering serves well.


Take That18 by robodentjp, on Flickr

Nikon D80
manual
Nikon AF-S 70-300 f4.5-5.6VR @180mm
f5.6
ISO800
center weighted


Take That 14 by robodentjp, on Flickr

Nikon D80
aperture
Nikon AF-S 70-300 f4.5-5.6VR @300mm
f8
ISO200
center weighted @ -0.3ev

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Nikon D80
AF-S 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 Nikon {} AF 50mm f1.8 Nikon {} AF-S 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 VR ED Nikon {} Nikon AF-S 105mm VRII f2.8 Micro ED N
MB-D80 battery grip {} 4GB Sandisk extreme SDHC {} Manfrotto 109xb & 804rc2head {} Lowepro Primus AW {} SB800
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27747651@N04/