Concert Photography Quiz

Small venues often have little stage light, and what there is changes color and brightness constantly. That forces high ISO and wide apertures, and the meter struggles to keep up. Distance to the stage is usually short in small venues, so it is rarely the problem.

Concert stages mix bright spotlights with large black areas. Matrix or center-weighted metering is pulled by the dark background and overexposes the lit performer. Spot metering on the performer's face reads only that small area, so the subject is exposed correctly and the background falls to black.

A guitarist's hands, head and instrument move quickly, and 1/250 second or faster stops most of that movement. At 1/60 second, stabilization only removes camera shake; the moving musician still blurs.

Prime lenses commonly open to f/1.4 or f/1.8, while the fastest common zooms stop at f/2.8, so a prime gathers one to two stops more light. In dim venues that means a faster shutter speed or lower ISO. Primes rarely have built-in stabilization, so that is not the reason.

Concert venues limit photographers to the first three songs to minimize disruption to the performance and to the paying audience's experience. After those songs, photographers must leave the front area and the band performs without photographer activity near the stage.

Stage lights change color constantly and mix several sources, so no fixed preset matches them. Auto white balance gets close, and shooting raw lets you set the final white balance for each shot afterward without loss. A Tungsten preset would turn LED and other non-tungsten lights very blue.

The photo pit is a designated corridor between the front edge of the stage and the audience security barrier. It provides photographers with close, clear sightlines to the performers while keeping them separated from the general audience area.

Strong colored stage lights, especially saturated red, blue or purple, tint skin unnaturally and can make faces look blotchy with little detail. Red light in particular tends to clip one color channel. Watching for it lets you time shots for whiter light or plan to correct or convert the image to black and white.

Most venues are too dark for anything smaller than about f/2.8. Shooting at f/1.4 to f/2.8 gathers enough light to hold a shutter speed fast enough for performers without pushing ISO to extreme levels. At f/8 you would need about three more stops of ISO than at f/2.8.

Continuous AF refocuses as the performer moves, and dynamic area or zone tracking lets the camera follow them across several focus points as they cross the frame. Single-shot modes lock focus once, so the subject drifts out of focus after they move.