Concert Photography with a P&S

[jafane]

Hi everyone!

I am going to a concert next week, and I was hoping to gain a little insight in advance. I have a canon A630 point and shoot that I will be bringing with me. Bringing a DSLR, even if I had one, would not be worth the risk of having it taken away from me.

My seat will be on the floor, and with any luck, very close to the stage (within the first 10 rows for sure).

If you have ANY tips or insight that you can bring, that would be great. I get that a flash is out. My camera has a good deal of manual control, so have some things to work with.

Thanks so much in advance!

[kencaleno]

Best advice? Don't bother!- You will need at least F2.8 lens,and your point and shoot F2.8 is equivalent to F8 on a dslr.Point and shoots are great cameras, I specialize in getting the best shots possible from them-but, some things you just cannot shoot. regards, Ken

[vandergus]

While it will be difficult to get clean images out of your A630 in these conditions, I'll try to be a little more helpful. It would help to establish some realistic expectations, though. Since you'll most likely be shooting at ISO 400 and 800, the images will be pretty noisy, but that doesn't mean they're unusable. You won't be able to make big 8" X 10" prints out of them but you may be able to get some nice 4" X 6" prints for an album.

As far as camera settings, as I mentioned before use the higher ISO settings on the camera. I think the A630 goes to ISO 800. Exposure is going to be the tricky part. If you just let the camera choose the exposure, it will most likely overexpose the photograph. That's because most of the frame will be dark (which the skews the camera's calculation for exposure) but the performer is much brighter, due to the stage lighting, which means they will end up looking like a blurry white blob. You don't have the ability to set the exposure manually with the A630 (set aperture and shutter speed simultaneously) but you can adjust the exposure compensation. If you're in matrix metering mode, set the exposure compensation to -1 or -2. This will give you a better chance of getting a properly exposed performer.

The other option, is to use spot metering. If you use this setting, and point the center AF spot at the performer, the camera will calculate the exposure based on the brightness of the person and ignore the dark stage behind them.

Of course, you may still end up with a shutter speed that is too slow to stop the action of the performer. In that case, well, you've found the limitations of you're camera.

Hope you get some good photos.