Advice for outdoor concert gig...

[owen]

Hey guys.

Our mayor is hosting a concert to raise funds for the tsunami victims and I volunteered to shoot it. It's going to be in daylight and I'm using the kit lens and a Tamron 70-300... I'm just after some ideas of what pre-determined pictures I should get.

The organiser said to focus on the volunteers, performers, and the funds being raised.

Any other ideas would be a great help.

Many thanks,
Owen.

[Greg B]

Make sure you have access all areas, and everyone knows what you are there for. The vibe should be positive - get backstage as well as front. Be professional but not apologetic, you have a job to do - attitude means a great deal when dealing with performers.

[owen]

Shouldn't be a problem... all the organisers know me... what goes on backstage at concerts that I should know about?

[Greg B]

Shouldn't be a problem... all the organisers know me... what goes on backstage at concerts that I should know about?

Good photo opportunities (and a whole bunch of other stuff )

[birddog114]

Should be a good time for doing this for the victims in SEA.
I like this mayor, he never say: to ban the camera in his territory

[owen]

Ah, well see the Mayor pretty much just has his name attached to the event. It's organised by many other people, he probably wouldn't know half of what is going on

[gstark]

Owen,

Mostly, this will be just normal shooting. Make sure to get any presentations etc. Use on-camera flash, dialled back about a stop. Get what you need to, but be aware of getting the way of others who also have jobs to do.

If you can, go onstage, but behind the performers, looking out towards the audience, during the daytime. Take a spot reading of the audience and set the camera to M (Manual); set your exposure according to the readings you just took.

This might look or feel strange, as you'll think that you're going to be massively underexposing the performers. Don't worry.

Now, use your SB800 on-camera (or just pop the built-in flash) and shoot the performers onstage, with the background being the audience. You should be able to get correctly exxposed performers (through the flash) as well as a correctly exposed background of the audience, through your metering.

[owen]

Thanks for the tip Mr Stark. This was one of the shots I have thought about, but the technical advice you just gave is terrific, thanks. I had a thought of doing it without flash and of course the performers would be in silhouette... but hey it's digital - I'll try both!

I'll only be there for the latter half of the event, so hopefully I'll still get a good few hours to take some good shots.

One question, why dial back the flash 1 stop and not leave it at 0? I thought the matrix metering took into account fill in flash pretty well.

[gstark]

Owen,

Thanks for the tip Mr Stark.

Mr Stark was my dad; I'm Gary, but I know what you're saying; my pleasure.

One question, why dial back the flash 1 stop and not leave it at 0? I thought the matrix metering took into account fill in flash pretty well.

To some extent, yes, but with the flash you're actually adding more light to the whole scene, or at least that part of it that's close to you.

I wouldn't want to be overpowering the available light, but simply filling in some shadows or darker pockets that might occur. For me the goal is to try to get a good balance between the sources of the light, but still be in control of the situation. Using lower power on the flash will help you achieve this goal.

Certainly, feel free to experiment on the day; use various combinations and review constantly, seeing what works best for you and moving ahead with that.

[owen]

One more thing guys.

Should I shoot RAW or jpeg? I want to take lots of shots, but I probably wouldn't do 290 odd which is approx how many it says I can fit on my 1GB CF card. How many NEF's would I fit on a 1GB card and do you think that'd be enough for me? (3 hours of taking photos of people/crowds etc.)

Many thanks,
Owen.

I'm really eagerly anticipating this experience, it'll help my photography a great deal I think!

[Paul]

I think from memory my 1gb card tells me about 90 NEF files which you can safely double this amount due to the D70's flaw with accurate shots allowed in NEF format.
Actually it's not really a flaw, more of a guide to what the minimum you can shoot!
It all depends on what your shooting and how much memory it takes up for each shot, I'm sure some of the more technical D70 masters will have better technical answer to this.

[ru32day]

I get somewhere between 180-190 NEF shots on a 1GB CF