Concert Photos

Concert Photos

Tamron 2.8/17-50, 26mm, 1/50 sec., f3.5, 800 ISO

There is a talented young funk band here in Stuttgart named No Better Question that I like quite a lot. I got to know the lead singer last year while he was doing an internship at the DAZ where a photo exhibition of mine was hanging.
Since I've been comparing the quality of pictures produced by Sony's A700 and A77 cameras here recently, I thought I would continue that while offering my regular readers some real content. The first four pictures here were taken with the Sony A700 in May 2011 at the Jugendhaus Ost and the last three were taken with the A77 in November 2012 at BIX.

Tamron 2.8/17-50, 50mm, 1/50 sec., f3.5, 1600 ISO

In a live concert situation, you can not count on the lighting to help you. You have to help the lighting. How? Of course high-ISO settings help but you also need to observe how the light hits each of the players and from which angle it would be best to photograph them from. If you are allowed the luxury of being able to move around and shoot at will, you'll be able to find the right angles for optimally capturing the musicians and their instruments.

Tamron 2.8/17-50, 50mm, 1/40 sec., f4, 500 ISO

While preparing my first post with pictures from a concert, I learned that desaturating the pictures helps eliminate a lot of the noise that comes with such low-light situations. However, it really depends on the amount of light you have and where it falls. The picture below has a terrific spray of light in it.

Tamron 2.8/17-50, 50mm, 1/100 sec., f4, 800 ISO

Tokina 2.8/28-80, 80mm, 1/80 sec., f3.5, 800 ISO

Desaturating the picture above would be nearly as unpatriotic (for an American) as wearing that shirt would be. Plus, the lovely retro bronze color of the BIX interior is something I wouldn't want you to miss!

The next picture, however, gains little from the blue and purple colors shining in the singer's hair. 

Tokina 2.8/28-80, 80mm, 1/100 sec., f4.5, 1600 ISO

This is what it would look like with a high-contrast black-and-white pass put on it. The viewer's eye can concentrate much more easily on the important elements.
In this last image, the high-ISO setting was required to capture the action with a relatively fast shutter speed. Again, the disadvantages of noise must be weighed against the ability to capture the moment. And, of course, you must know beforehand if you are going to use the pictures on the web or print them. In this case, the noise doesn't detract at all from the image quality.

Tokina 2.8/28-80, 80mm, 1/200 sec., f3.2, 3200 ISO