How to get the best photos at gigs?

josha007

Hi all.I'm hoping a few people on here can help me as this issue is driving me crazy.

I like to go to gigs and love taking photos there but always a lot of them come out fuzzy or worse. I've tried a lot of different setting on my camera, which is a Samsung L730 7.2MP, but none of them seem to work. I know that the 'Auto' setting is a big no no at gigs, but I can't work out what to do otherwise. The light is always a problem at gigs, but whenever i try flash it picks up everyone right infront of me instead of the stage.Does anyone know how to get the stage more lit up than the crowd?

Any tips or help would be really grateful.Thanks in advance.Josh

Sneezy

Hi,

I find that if i turn the flash off my Fuji Finepix F50fd that the pics usually come out okay - i've only been to three gigs with it but was v please with the results apart from that i don't really know - but i do share your frustration with fuzzy results i've been to some amazing gigs but have had to delete half the photo because of the same prob (prior to getting the Fuji).

HTH

xyz123

First of all select a high ISO speed. Higher ISO helps take pictures in low light conditions but they make photos grannier. But i would always prefer grannier photos than blurry ones.

Secondly to avoid blurring, try using sports mode or selecting higher shutter speed as it would help prevent blurry images due to movement.

Also if you are close enough to stage try switching off the flash and see results. I find that many times the photos with less light look better than the over exposed ones (taken using bright flash)....

I am no photography expert but hope that helps

josha007

Ah now my ISO speed was down at 80, damn!I was at a really good gig last night and only had 20 decent photos out of about 100.I usually have the flash off.

xyz123, does the shutter speed on the camera screen look something like '1/60'?I'm no camera expert myself btw.

Marty_J

Unless you're sitting on the stage, a compact camera won't really work very well. They aren't very good at taking pictures in low light, and the flash is pretty useless as it doesn't have nearly enough range.

Your camera has an ASR feature (Advanced Shake Reduction), which should help taking pictures in low light, and increasing the ISO will enable you to take pictures with a faster shutter speed, thereby decreasing the amount of blurriness. It will however introduce more noise into the image, especially on a compact camera. You'll find it's a balancing act between the blurriness of the picture, and the amount of noise. Though in my view, a sharp picture with noise looks better than a blurry picture without.

Practice taking pictures in low light, and play with the settings until you find something acceptable. If you're really into concert photography, investing in an SLR with a nice big zoom lens might be something to consider.

kevin0410

Unless we are talking about pub gigs you will never light up a stage with a built in flash on a point and shoot. You would really need a dslr with some 'fast glass' so you can get as much light in as possible

Avoriaz

Built in flash on compact cameras is only effective over a few metres so, unless you are very close to the stage, it is worse than useless as it over exposes the people in front of you and the band on stage are underexposed.

josha007

Weird you talk about the ASR feature Marty. My girlfriend and I went on the London Eye last weekend at night and my first few photos were awful. Then i accidently tried the ASR setting with the close up setting on. Although I'm not sure its the close-up setting, its the one that looks like a flower and has a 'A' next to it. It produced some great pictures, and I used that setting most last night. But as I've just found out about the ISO setting, I will do that in the future.It was only at 80 last night.

kevin0410

The setting with the flower is the macro setting for taking close up pictures i.e. At around 15-20 cm from the subject

josha007

Yeah that's what I thought kevin. But for some reason that setting took better pictures then without it on the ASR setting.I was trying to work out why, couldn't think of any reason!I was about 5-8 metres from the stage

randomtask_2

Lots of good advice from others here...I would also add that a bit of 'post-production' in photo editing software (like Photoshop, Picasa, GIMP etc) can help loads. No substitute for a good photo, but adjusting the levels alone can often bring detail hidden by poor lighting in dark images.