Gig Photography

[Paul Smith]

If the weather holds up I'll probably head down to copperfest over the weekend with camera. Any tips for gig photogrpahy? I'm thinking I'll take the 70-200 and crank up the ISO a bit to keep the shutter speeds fairly quick.

When the sun vanishes I'll probably move to spot metering and see what happens, I'm guessing the variations in light would make full manual a bit of a pain so will probably stick it in Tv and see what I can get away with.

[Eifion Williams]

Hi Paul,
If i were you i would take the longest and fastest lenses you have to take photos of the bands, and as you say when the light goes down bump up the iso ( film speed ) and use a monopod if you have one. As you say Spot metering would be a good idea in tricky lighting.You could either use AV or TV depending on how much movement there is on stage , but i would use continuous focusing to follow movement.
For some shots of people having fun a short zoom would be handy with a bit of fill flash.

Good luck and i hope you can get near the front for some great shots.

[Paul Smith]

Cheers Eifion.

Went down yesterday and we had a good time. Sadly my longer lenses aren't the fastest but I think I got away with it for most of the day. Struggled with Midge Ure as I had the ISO maxed out and still needed to deliberately underexpose by a stop or two to get a usable shutter speed. A monopod would definitely have been useful at that point.

I've put some shots up on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/monpics/sets/72157622060758399/) if anyone wants to take a look.