Cool Cherry Cream

I’ve searched for tips on how to take good pictures at concerts, but all I’ve ever found were guides for professional photographers taking pictures from the stage.

I’m not a pro, and evidently, you aren’t either. I’m a rebel who sneaks cameras into big arenas. Cheap, sneaky, distance photography and professional, decent, portrait photography are two different things. But just because we aren’t technically supposed to have cameras doesn’t mean we can’t get a few nice shots for our collection, right?

The problems

Taking pictures at concerts presents quite a few problems, namely:

• Your subject is far away.
• Your subject is moving (in most cases).
• You’re moving.
• It’s dark.

This generally results in pictures that are:

• Too small.
• Too blurry.
• Too dark.
• Too grainy.

Forget composition, forget the rule of thirds, forget all that fancy-schmancy artsy-fartsy stuff. If you have a blurry picture, you have a bad picture, plain and simple.

Most people at concerts aren’t concerned about getting a great shot, they just want a shot. This guide will help you to get that shot in focus and visible — which personally, I think makes a photo well on its way to being “great” (since most people can’t even get those right).

Stay calm

Being a concert photographer is stressful. You’ve gotta be fast, real fast. Your subject is always moving, and so are you, despite your best efforts to stay perfectly still.

If you’re lucky enough to get up close, you may occasionally find yourself only a few feet away from the performers! A great time for pictures, right? Wrong! How many times has this happened:

The lead singer comes over to your end of the stage. He’s looking right at you! Do you wave or do you take a picture? Umm, umm… picture! Hurry up, hurry up, you stupid camera, start up! Come on now, focus, focus — ah! Your hand moved, it’s blurry! Alright camera, enough with the preview, let’s try again — d’oh! He turned around! Dangnammit, now he’s gone!

There’s really no way to prevent this from happening. You know the pressure’s on to get a good shot. The best thing you can do is to take your time and try for one good picture rather than a bunch of sub-par blurry ones. Obvious, right? The trouble is trying to remember that when the time comes.

Use the video screens

Often when I’m in the nosebleeds, I’ll take pictures of the screen rather than the stage.

The reason that this makes for really good pictures is the fact that you’re taking a picture of a picture that has already been professionally shot. They’ve composed the video feed so that it looks good, and thus, so will your picture.

This also allows you to get closer pictures and angles that no one in the audience taking pictures of the stage can get. Plus, the screens are sometimes brighter than the stage and will therefore give you a brighter picture (and dark pictures is something that happens all too often at concerts).

All of my pictures at the Van Halen concert were taken of the screens and those pictures are some of my favourites.

Of course, sometimes there are no screens and sometimes you can’t get very good pictures of the screens because of your angle or just the way the screen is made. In that case, you’re just going to have to suck it up and take pictures of the stage like the rest of us.

Don’t use digital zoom

Most cameras come with two types of zoom: optical and digital. Optical zoom is when the camera lens extends outwards to get a closer picture; digital zoom is something that goes on inside the camera.

Remember this: optical zoom good, digital zoom bad.

If you have a setting that lets you do this, you should disable digital zoom altogether so you aren’t tempted to use it.

“B-b-but digital zoom gives me a closer picture!” you cry. B-b-but, I say, it also gives you a grainy picture. Compare:

The picture below was taken with optical zoom.

The picture below was taken with digital zoom.

See the difference? The second one is closer, but it’s blurry and you can’t make out the details. The first picture is sharper and clearer. When you can make out someone’s nose, you’ve got a good shot. (This is sadly not sarcasm, but actually true for concert photography. It’s tricky business.)

Zoom out

If you find your pictures are blurry, try zooming out a little. When the camera is zoomed in, it’s more sensitive to your hand movements and it is therefore more likely you are going to get a blurry shot.

Sure, zooming out means smaller pictures, but imagine that you were seated a few rows back: you’d still be getting the same size pictures if you were zoomed in completely; at least in your seat, zoomed out, your picture will be clearer than the poor sap behind you.

This picture was taken, I believe, with absolutely no zoom, and it’s probably the clearest, sharpest concert picture I have. Plus, the lights and beams look cool.

No flash

Turn off your flash! It’s annoying for the people around you, and if you’re up close, it’s annoying for the performers.

I never use flash at concerts, but I have been asked a few times stop taking pictures (probably due to the fact that I was taking so many; I average about 200 pictures per concert). I’d be willing to bet that if I was using flash, I wouldn’t have gotten a quarter as many pictures as I did without.

If you still aren’t convinced that flash is not for you, then realize that flash can only light up things that are just so far in front of you, so every time you look at your pictures from the Who concert, you’re going to see a shiny, overexposed bald guy’s head.

Ignore white balance

You can usually set the white balance to things like daylight, overcast, fluorescent, tungsten, etc.

Honestly, I’ve never found these settings to be any help. They are intended to slightly change the colour of your pictures, but I usually see no difference (especially with concerts where coloured lights distort natural colours anyway). This can easily be changed in Photoshop anyway, so I don’t see any use in bothering with trying to set these. Just leave them as default.

ISO

Most cameras allow you to set the ISO. The ISO number affects how dark/bright and how grainy/clear the picture is and it usually ranges from about 50-400.

When the ISO number is low, you will have a clear but dark picture. The picture below was taken with a low ISO.

Note that most pictures taken at a low ISO are darker than this one, but several other factors come into play (including Photoshop ;) ) and are discussed below.

As the ISO gets larger, the picture will be brighter but it will also be grainier. Leaving your camera on its default settings will generally give you a very grainy picture to account for the darkness at a concert. The picture below was taken with a high ISO: check out all the noise and graininess around the smoke.

So, what should your ISO setting be? While I would love to shoot at 50 all the time to avoid any noise, it’s not possible. Camera settings interact with each other: if you have a low ISO, you need to use a slow shutter speed or your picture will be too dark. And if you use a slow shutter speed, you’re going to get a blurry picture.

I’ve heard 200 cited as a good number, so try somewhere around there. If you find your pictures are too blurry, go to the next highest number. If you find your pictures are too grainy, go to the next lowest number. But remember, don’t spend too much time trying to find the best setting, or else you’ll miss the shot and the concert.

Lower your exposure

My camera’s exposure ranges from -2 to +2. Positive numbers mean brighter pictures and negative numbers mean darker pictures.

At concerts, I nearly always have my exposure at -2.

“What?!” you ask. Didn’t I just say concerts are dark? Why would you want to make the picture darker?

While it’s true that concerts in general are dark, the thing you’re taking pictures of (ie. the stage, the performers) isn’t. The camera, however, still thinks it’s dark because the rest of the room is dark, and it compensates for that accordingly by automatically lowering the shutter speed and raising the ISO.

I find that leaving the exposure at 0 gives me lots of bad pictures with very white people.

That’s what’s called “overexposed”: when they’re blown-out, white, and you can’t make out any features. And when you’ve overexposed Steven Tyler’s mouth so much that you can’t even see it, well… you’ve got a pretty bad picture.

Focus

Most cameras come with a few different focus modes, generally: auto focus, manual focus, macro (flower), and infinity.

Macro is no good for us, since it’s for taking pictures of things up close.

Manual focus is also no good, because it requires you to set how far away the subject is to ensure that they are in focus. This is bad for two reasons:

1. Your subject probably won’t stay in the same place.
2. You don’t have time to change these settings every time you want to take a picture.

That leaves auto focus and infinity (which is sometimes accessed through manual focus). Infinity sounds like the right choice because it means everything in the picture will be in focus automatically, but I always choose auto focus for a reason I will explain below.

The shutter speed trick

Shutter speed, in my opinion, is the most important setting for concert photos.

But, alas! Where’s the shutter speed button? All of the non-pro cameras I’ve seen don’t allow you to set the shutter speed as a way of “stupid-proofing” the camera. It’s annoying, but necessary, since accidentally setting your shutter speed too low or too high will make all your pictures too bright, blurry, or dark. For most people, it’s best if the camera decides this setting automatically.

I’ve read that to get around this, you should put the camera on “sports” mode, since it defaults to a fast shutter speed which will prevent blur. This has never worked for me, so I came up with my own trick.

To get the best concert pictures, you want a relatively low ISO number and a fast shutter speed. The low ISO ensures that the picture is clear and no noise or graininess. The fast shutter speed will make the picture sharp and not blurred.

We need to trick the camera into thinking that the picture is bright and therefore, it can use a fast shutter speed, since we can’t change that on our own.

The process is simple:

1. Make sure your camera is on auto-focus.
2. Point your camera at the spotlights, video screen, or the brightest thing you can find.
3. Press the shutter button down halfway; you might hear or feel a slight click.
4. Don’t let go of the button; wait for the camera to focus. On some cameras, a light or message will appear on the screen to let you know it is ready.
5. Still holding the shutter button, point your camera toward the stage or performer.
6. Press the button down the rest of the way to take the picture.

Other than the spotlight bit, this is how you should always be taking pictures, concert or not. Give the camera time to focus, don’t immediately press the shutter button. If you never realized this, practice focusing the camera before you go to the concert. At first it may be difficult, but eventually it will become second nature.

If you find that you get pictures that are too dark using this method (since fast shutter speed means darker pictures), you can either increase your ISO (which can sometimes be messy), or try pointing at something less bright when focusing the camera. Even if you have the spotlights off-centre on your viewfinder/screen, it should make the shutter speed a little more manageable.

I also just recently figured out this trick, so it may help to increase your exposure, despite what I said above. I didn’t have enough time to experiment and find out if that would help, so feel free to try it yourself.

Photoshop

“Why bother with settings? If a picture is too dark, I’ll fix it in Photoshop!” you say.

Not so, I say. If a picture is too overexposed or underexposed, there is no way of fixing it. Take the Aerosmith picture above — try photoshopping it and getting back the detail on Steven Tyler’s shirt or face. It’s impossible because all the pixels are the exact same shade of white, there’s no information there to bring back the original image.

Same with grainy pictures. I have yet to find any way to completely remove (or even partially remove) noise from pictures. This is why I would rather have a dark picture than a grainy one any day.

Basically, don’t count on Photoshop to fix your mistakes. The best thing you can do is get the shot right the first time.

Photoshop can be helpful to refine your pictures, however. In CS3, the photo editing tools are mostly located under Image > Adjustments.

Levels is my favourite tool for fixing photos. This is where you make the picture darker or lighter and adjust the colours (white balance) using the eye dropper tools. If I’m not happy with the results Levels gives me, I’ll try Color Balance for the colour and Brightness/Contrast or Exposure for lightening/darkening.

The Shadow/Highlight tool is pretty amazing the first time you find it. When you have an overexposed picture (in concert photography, this happens to faces a lot), you can increase the highlight amount to make features more defined (but 15 is the highest I would ever use). I generally don’t find any use for the shadow tool in concert pictures, but it can be handy for regular photos.

I won’t go into any more detail here, since photoshopping photos is a whole ‘nother article, and it’s been done many times before by better people than I. The best thing you can do is experiment — but always keep the original pictures in case you make a mistake.

Overview: So what have we learned?

1. Take lots of pictures (but remember to enjoy the music!).
2. Be prepared to take lots of bad pictures (10 good pictures out of 100 is great).
3. Use both hands to hold the camera.
4. Try taking pictures of the video screens instead of the stage if you’re far away.
5. Don’t use digital zoom.
6. Try zooming out a little if you find pictures are blurry.
7. Don’t use flash.
8. ISO should be around 200.
   1. Increase if pictures are blurry, decrease if pictures are grainy.
9. Exposure should be at -2 to prevent overexposed faces from spotlights.
10. Focus should be on auto mode to use the shutter speed trick, otherwise, use infinity.
11. Shutter speed trick: focus on the spotlights to obtain a higher shutter speed, then recompose your shot.
12. Don’t count on Photoshop to fix your mistakes. If a picture is too bright, dark, or grainy, there is no way to fix it.
13. Don’t spend too much time fiddling with settings or else you won’t get any pictures!