Concerts and lighting

nikos · April 10, 2006

Greetings!

A couple of days ago, I took my camera (20D w/ 70-300 IS lens) to a Greek concert in Atlantic City, NJ and I was initially frustrated trying to get the correct exposure. I had the camera set to center-weighted metering and anything close to the 0 E.V. mark would result in badly blown highlights.

I actually had to shoot about 2 stops to the left in order to get a decently exposed picture of the performers. I'm assuming it was because of the spotlights that were aimed at them.

Overall, it was a great experience and I'm looking forward to taking pics at another concert. Any comments, criticism and pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nikos

My settings:
Exposure mode - Manual
ISO - 1600
Metering - Center Weighted
Flash - Off
Lens - 70-300 (4.0 - 5.6)
Format: RAW
Image were post processed.
Distance - about 50' away from the performers

Here's the gallery:
http://nikos.smugmug.com/gallery/1348752/1/63640255

Here are a couple of samples:

wxwax · April 10, 2006

That second one really works for me.

Imagine that, a concert where there's too much light!

swintonphoto · April 13, 2006

I am not sure, but I imagine your problems came because there was sooo much light on the individual and nothing everywhere else. The camera could not figure it out. I would recommend spot metering (if your camera can do that) on the subject. That could give you a more correct exposure.

nikos · April 13, 2006

wxwax wrote:

Imagine that, a concert where there's too much light!

Haha, I actually can't. I've been to many concerts but since I never brought a camera with me, I never payed attention to the lighting so I figured that this would have been common. Guess I was lucky to have such lighting at my first concert shoot.

swintonphoto wrote:

I am not sure, but I imagine your problems came because there was sooo much light on the individual and nothing everywhere else. The camera could not figure it out. I would recommend spot metering (if your camera can do that) on the subject. That could give you a more correct exposure.

After looking over my photos again I came to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, the 20D doesn't have the luxury of spot metering -- it only has evaluative, center weighted avg and partial. At least shooting RAW helped give me the extra headroom needed to save and tweak the marginal photos.

Nikos

Concerts and lighting

Comments