Concert Photography

[C&EPhotography]

Last week I shot a concert. I got some shots that I was happy with like the one I attached. I liked capturing the movement of the drummers sticks, but wanted to get some shots like this with no blurring. I was shooting a canon Xs at 8.0Mp with a Canon 75-300 lens. I was shooting at speed 1/30, f5.0 ISO 1600. If I increased my shutter speed, I did not have enough light to get the shot, and I was already shooting with aperture wide open and max ISO. Any suggestions how I could capture that much movement in low light?

[Doug Sundseth]

About all that's left is a faster lens, a faster body, or underexposing the photo and pulling up in post.

An f/2.8 lens will get you to about 1/100, but a long f/2.8 lens is expensive and often not allowed into a concert.

ISO 6400 will get you to about 1/120 (and with a faster lens will get you into the 1/400 range), but again, they're expensive.

If you're not already pulling the image up in post, you could probably get about one to two stops by shooting underexposed RAW files and pushing up the fill light. You'll get some pretty nasty noise artifacts, though.

You're approaching the kind of photography that requires you to throw money. Lots of money.

Good luck.