just been asked to photograph a couple of gigs by people at my music college

i have a canon 1000d with kit lens and an 80-200 zoom lens too.

what kind of settings would you use for a gig? apeture? shutter speed? iso? etc etc

any other general tips?

thanks

Just try out something.
You have the camera and you have the ability to express what you want. If you want movement you choose longer shutter speed, if you want focus on the lead singer you choose a low F number.

- Low ISO.

e/ I think you should buy a flash. It is very useful!

This post was edited by Qhotex on Feb 10 2009 04:34pm

Get a flash if your shooting indoors.

It really depends on the lighting at that event or whatever. I have taken some pictures at a couple of outdoor concerts and I believe the lighting are usually not a problem if you don't want to use a flash. Well mr Qhotex has pretty much told you everything you need to know other than that you may want to find a good spot to take some clear shots of the stage and the lead singer or the band.

I only like shooting flash outdoors for fill light. Inside tends to overexpose imo.

It really depends what kind of lights are at the place. Use shutter speed of 1/60 to 1/120, low f-number and high iso, if there is really good light you might be able to use lower iso and if its really light you might allso get to use higher f-numbers, but low ones allso gives nice background blur. If there isnt much light, the lowest f-number might be even too high with max iso, in that case you would need a prime lens(or zoom with f-2.8(if 2.8 is fast enough)) or you need to use flash

This post was edited by Tomes on Feb 10 2009 05:48pm

Bounce flash at a concert is the best.
There's not enough light at concerts without using a huge iso which would result in noise.

Use a fast lens like f1.8, high ISO, RAW is a must (no flash)
use a fast-medium lens, low ISO for short distance, high for long, RAW is a must (Flash)

try to use the flash as little as possible becuause people at gigs dont like it going off in their face all of the time. Dont bring a huge lens as well coz ull end up breaking it or irratating somone.

If the concert isnt in clear sunshine im quite sure you will need to use max or atleast allmoast max iso. And yeah forgot to say that shooting raw is a must or you will fail horribly. 50mm 1.8 lens is a great cheap lens for gigs on a crop sensor. I think u might not be able to shoot with that 80-200 lens at all. Iv shooted 2 concerts and both i had to use 6400 iso f/1.2-1.8 and bearly had enough light with those setups to handheld the camera steady. So if your going with 4.5-5.6 f-numbers and 1600 iso you will be really much screwed if its even little dark in the place(darker than normal room light). If that happens that you cant get enough light to hold the camera steady, you should underexpose the images(and use slowest shutterspeed possible you can hold steady) and push up exposure in raw editing, but that will give you even more noise. You shouldnt push the exposure more than 1-2 stops on editing or the results will be horrible, so if you need to underexpose dont do it more than 1-2 stops. If you use flash i suggest you try long shutterspeeds(like 0.5 to 6 seconds), so that the flash exposure will be correct(correct might be around -2/3stops) and the background will be normally exposed, you will get cool effect where the for example singer is sharp from the flash and backgrounds all blurred(you can twist you camera around while it makes the exposure, but watch out so hard lights wont get over your subject).

This post was edited by Tomes on Feb 11 2009 10:32am