Concert Photography

[braeside]

I did my first concert on Friday, actually a dimly lit club where my Niece and nephew were performing live in their band "The Industry".

I bumped into a music journalist who had turned up without his photographer, so offered to take some photos for his review of a couple of the bands.

Shot it with the A900 plus 135/1.8 and 24-70/2.8 zoom, mainly at 1250 ISO. Thought the Sony handled it well. The lighting was awful, dim, predominately RED spots on the vocalist. Still...

I really enjoyed the experience, getting too close to the speakers and fumbling in the darkness to change lenses. :ROTFL:


Put together a couple of slideshows on Zenfolio:
The Industry (slideshow - royalty free music, not theirs):

http://braeside.zenfolio.com/the_industry/slideshow

The Deco Arcade band slideshow (slightly more headbanger music for them).

http://braeside.zenfolio.com/deco_arcade/slideshow

Some of the more unusual shots:
Monochrome conversions worked where sometimes the red was too much:





Also some colour monochrome on this one

[paulmurphy]

Hi David,

Liked the slide shows, looks like an atmospheric club, with really difficult lighting condtions.

I really like the first two monochrome pictures you posted, they have a documentary feel to them.

Best wishes and good luck to the bands

Paul

[Greg Beetham]

Nice clear shots, and sharp too.
Greg

[braeside]

Thanks Paul & Greg!

[aster]

Hi David,

Good to see your frames here once again. Deifinitely missed them!

The prevailent red light in the dimly-lit club doesn't actually look too bad to the first-time-viewer's eyes, in my opinion. I think, you're a little overwhelmed by being in the same red-lit-space as the red light source and the sounds in general. That's how clubs are and the only way of conveying an as-it-is situation by the photographer.

I wouldn't worry too much really! : )

I like how you handled the camera work as all shots are pretty clear and sharp, which I only assume were all shot hand-held.

I enjoyed the monochrome frames but I also enjoyed the rather noisy, sepia last shot in this thread for the 'poster' value.

Thanks for taking the time to share with us! : )

Yildiz

[braeside]

Thanks for the comments, it has been a while since I posted here, but mainly because I have not been taking a lot of very interesting photos, just routine scenic holiday stuff. I also have been playing with rangefinder photography with an M8 quite a bit.

Yes, all were hand held, but I could use about 1/125 for most shots, I used manual mode and ISO 1250. Slower shutter speeds would have been a problem with the fast movement of the players. Of course higher ISO would have been nicer, but that is not what the A900 is all about. I generally never shoot above ISO 800, but was pleasantly surprised how even ISO 1600 worked out in the dark club. Having fast lenses helped a lot of course.

I was worried by the red light for two reasons, it may have caused the autofocus to be a little out especially with the narrow DOF of the 135/1.8 (the autofocus system does seem to affected by the wavelength of light) and it reduces the effective resolution of the photo by a third as we only have one of the three colours. However for my purposes (websize photos) it worked out OK.

Yes that sepia image was really underexposed and hence noisy, but I liked it somehow, can't explain why, the composition just seemed unusual but interesting to my eye.

[aster]

I was worried by the red light for two reasons, it may have caused the autofocus to be a little out especially with the narrow DOF of the 135/1.8 (the autofocus system does seem to affected by the wavelength of light) and it reduces the effective resolution of the photo by a third as we only have one of the three colours. However for my purposes (websize photos) it worked out OK.

Yes that sepia image was really underexposed and hence noisy, but I liked it somehow, can't explain why, the composition just seemed unusual but interesting to my eye.

I see what you mean about the red light, David. I suppose having one of the fastest and quality lenses out there reduced your chances of getting bad or unsuable shots. Thanks for detailed reasoning behind your worries of a specific colour usage in lighting when shooting photos; the wavelenght indeed is important and can produce unexpected results, hence making things very difficult.

A personal point of view: I like seeing noise in photos to a certain degree when shot indoors of a place / venue where music is played; it can enhance the visual aspect of an otherwise musical event through photography. ( though noiseless shots are also welcome. )

Thanks, : )

Yildiz

[InTheSky]

Good Picture, I like mostly the effect of the 135mm 1.8 on the guitar.

The A900 is probably not the best camera for this kind of picture, but trust me you can use it at up to ISO 5000 without any trouble.

I really like the way you present your picture with the music.

The worst nightmare for concert photography in low light is where the light is provide by big crappy LED system. To your eye the color is good ... but instead of tungsten, the Camera sensor will look more to a color at 255,255,255 level boosted ... as a final result there will be big overexposed purple color every where on your subject.

With LED light I'm almost processing in B/W, or I'm playing a lot with color shifting in Lightroom.

By the way, the music is good too .

Regards,

Frank

[braeside]

Thanks Frank, I much appreciate and value your critique.

By the way, I apologise if you are getting a pop-up copyright box appearing over each slide, this is something that just started happening in Zenfolio recently, a bug I think. Hopefully they will fix it soon.

Next time I get a chance to shoot at a low light venue I will certainly try and up the ISO.

The music was from some of the free tracks that Zenfolio provide, I just chose some that suited the bands (I thought).

I find slide shows without music duller, but appreciate that it can be annoying to get sound blaring out of the computer unexpectedly (I hate webpages that have music by default).

Cheers

David