Concert photos

[levoxrox]

I attend a lot of concerts and my hubby bought me a fujifilm finepix s2900 for Christmas. I would like to know what settings would be best for taking pics in an indoor venue. Should the ISO be 1600? I don't know much about ISO, shutter speed etc. If anyone could help me I would really appreciate it. I want to take good pics without playing around with the camera and missing half of it trying to figure out settings.

[RichardTaylor]

Welcome to the forums.

Re exposure etc.
You may find this tutorial helpful.

Exposure (1) A balancing act


Re concerts (I sometimes shoot classical music concerts) .
(1) Aperture priority mode.
(2 Maximum ISO (to make the camera as sensitive as possible but also increases noise (grain) in the photograph.
(3) Lens wide open (smallest F number) - this will allow it to gather the maximum amount of light
(4) Take what ever shutter speed you can get.
(5) If you find you have more light than you need then reduce the ISO.

To help get the exposure right know how to read the histogram. It is an excellent tool for checking exposure.

The camera metering system may be easily fooled by tricky lighting. If that is the case you may need to use manual exposure mode. THe same principals apply..
Indoor lighting may also cause colours to be off (yellow?). In this case you will need to adjust the white balance when shooting.

The clue is to practice first before shooting something important to you.

[ccting]

@Richard,

1) Any relationship between exposure - brightness of light source?
2) I have seen a few concern pics, always a back lighting can be seen in those pics. What is the intentional of such placement? For hairlight? dim light? I need to know the reasons as I am not going to do the same blindly...

ty.

[RichardTaylor]

(1) What do you think?
Take some photographs with different intensity (at the subject) light sources and note the differences.

(2) It is an artistic decision of the lighting director, however for classical music concerts the orchestra and choir has to be able to read the music and see the conductor.

[ccting]

Where to gain the literature review of all artistic design of lighting? Any book? website?
ty

[levoxrox]

Thanks for your replies.