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Hi,
On short notice, i am doing a photo shoot of a band playing tonight. I will try get two "sets" of images, one before they play (in ally ways against walls etc) and then one when they are on stage playing. Obviously i am an amature, and dont need magazine worthy shots, but i want to try get some decent one as i will use them for dvd/cd/poster designs (im much better at graphic design than photography!) I have no worries taking photos in normal/high light situations (or where i can use a tripod) but i suck at night/dark situations.

This is my first time really taking photos at night/dark venue and from previous experiance i have trouble getting good images in low light situations. I would like some tips and advice for the situation. Also what sort of setting should i look at to get me started?

My camera is a canon 400D and i only have the twin lens kit. I assume that i should use the 18-55mm lens? increase the iso? (to what level?) I cant use a tripod, so need quick shutter speed. Also flash, from past experiance using flash has the effect of 'washing out' the subjects, should i be using flash or what? It would be great to be able to experiment with settings but since all i can view photos on is the viewfider (which is pretty much useless) this really isnt an option.

Thanks for your help!

Please review this threadand this thread. There's plenty of good advice for you there.

I've got one coming up soon too!

Packing the 35L,85L & 70-200 IS. Not going to use flash.. so this should be interesting

My suggestion is to set your camera to TV mode, and get a shutter equal to whatever focal length your shooting with. You'll need to raise the ISO high enough to get the speed. More than likely youll find your shooting wide open in order to get the speed but you don't want it too fast otherwise youll loose ambient light which I think is crutial at indoor gigs like this

ie: shooting at 85mm, make sure you have at least 1/85 sec or similar. That may take ISO 400 or 800 depending on how dark it is. Don't bother with a tripod you'll waste your time

Take your flash incase, you may need some fill if you can't get your shutter fast enough. At least with some flash you can use a slower shutter and of course lower ISO

Hope that helps

hmm i think the main problems you'll have are the notsogood low light capabilities of the bundled lenses. so you'll have to ramp up the ISO several stops to bring in the same amount of light as say a 2.8 lens (i think i said this right?)
possible to borrow an external flash? you'lll probably need that for AF assist. does the 400D use the pop up flash as the AF assist or does it have a dedicated now? (i cant even remember, even though we flog these off and have sold out hahah)

high ISO, and keep the shutter within your handholding capabilities whilst pushing for properly exposed images.
at a crap lighting gig i shot last week, i was alternating between f/2.8-4, shutter around 1/40, ISO 800, flash on 1/64-1/32 power. (thanks to Gary, i managed to nullify the red overexposure enough to capture some facial detail:))

goodluck with it!
-j