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I have a wonderful opportunity next week. I will be shooting a function and the guest for the evening is James Morrison.
I know there are some folk here who have experience in shooting concerts and would love to get some pointers.
I have a new D300 and am getting used to the higher ISO settings (compared to the trusty D70) What do you recommend as a good setting for a low light concert situation. I also have a some recollection here that someone mentioned using the 50mm lens. I have the 1.8. Is this the best lens to use? I will be able to get right up close to the stage.

BUMP - sorry but really would like some help on this one... please..

Hi Mal...

In the past, I've used the 50mm 1.4 and 105mm 2.8 to great effect in concert & theatre photography... 70-200mm 2.8 would be great if you can get your hands on one...

I have the D700 now and have no reluctance in shooting at ISO 3200 and sometimes 6400. It just delivers great images every time...

I believe that the D300 is pretty good too, so I would advise shooting with a fast lens at ISO 1600 and using NR software to reduce the noise (if any)

Hi Mal,

The 50 f/1.8 should be fine; do you have any other fast glass?

I would switch to spot metering if you're not already using it. Or completely ignore the metering and chimp the histogram.

One of the issues with stage lighting is that it's quite specific with areas of high contrast. When you use the other metering methods, what I've experienced is that the camera attempts to gove me an average reading, which basically underexposes everything and I end up with even more shitty images than I would normally get.

Set the camera to M, ISO 1000, f/5.6 and 1/80 as a starting point. Shoot and chimp the histogram, and adjust as necessary. What you're looking for is to not burn the highlights, but get good skin tones with good levels of detail in the faces and instruments etc. Adjust ISO, shutter and aperture as needed.

Try and stay within the lens's sweet spot, rather than breaking it out to maximum aperture, as you lose your DoF when wide open. If you need to shoot wide open, try to maximise your distance to subject a little, so as to lessen the DoF issues.

At the same time, you want to get good, rich dark areas where your scenes are unlit. Remember that there will be lots of those, and your histogram will reflect this, so it will be ok for your histogram to fall off the lh side of the graph.

Shutter speeds slower than about 1/50 will allow more subject movement in the images. This can be both bad and good, depending upon what you're after.

Watch for changes in lighting: as you know, some lighting engineers will chop and change, perhaps with the beat, and that will totally screw you up exposure wise. If the lighting is relatively constant, then once your exposure is set, you should be pretty well right for the event.

Don't be scared to pop your flash either. I generally pull it back (-1.3 EV) so that it provides an element of fill, but still lets me use the stage lighting.

Many thanks John and Gary for your advice.
I'll stick with the 50mm as it is my fastest glass (a few more of these gigs and I'll convince the boss to buy me some new gear!)
It will be a challenge and I will post some results once I know which ones the client wants. Will be keen to get some very critical comment on them.
Thanks again for your advice.