Point & Shoot Concert Photography

I got a number of folks asking me about how to take better concert photo’s with their point & shoot camera’s so instead of having to try to answer everyone individually I thought I’d just post about it.

It’s really hard to be able to speak specifically about any particular P&S as they are so very different from one another and keep getting better and better.. as a matter of fact there are a couple of P&S that are out there that are as good as some of the entry level Dslr.. I’m told the Nikon CoolPix P7000 is really unbelievable at about 500 bucks.. anyway what I thought I’d do is just give you some idea’s and approaches on how to set you camera to get the most out of it. ….these thoughts as  just generalities not “gospel”

So grab a notebook, so you can keep track of the changes you made and lets get started. (That way you can always set them back if you need to).

Flash

If you in the first row at a show then flash probably works ok for your photo’s.. but if you noticed, it washes out all the stage lighting. Well that’s the nature of the beast. Often it can be the trade off between getting the photo or not. Now, if your farther back then about 10 ft from the stage.. forget it. The light that your flash puts out won’t reach the stage. You’ll get great shots of the back of the heads of the people in the 5-10 rows in front of you.. but that’s about it.. If that’s you, you’re better off just turning off your flash all together. (and no, I have never used a flash for any of the shows I have shot)

Tweek your camera:

Here are a couple quick settings you can make that might help you out.

• See if you have a sports setting. This will set you camera up to shoot as fast as it can.. may help you minimize the blur that you’d normally get.
• Set the highest quality (resolution) you can: For this camera, I have to make two changes. 1)Set the size to Large and 2) set the quality to Superfine. Be aware though that when you make this change you may not be able to take near as many photo’s as you used to.

• One last thing you can try, again you’ll have to look in your manual for this. See if you can change the ISO setting. In a nutshell ISO controls how sensitive your camera is to light. The lower the light the more sensitivity you camera need to record an image. When I shoot a show I have my ISO set to at least ISO1600. On this camera notice that the max I can go is ISO 400. This would be fine if I was trying to take a picture in my living room, but not so good at many of the concerts I attend… But I say try it and see what happens. I doesn’t cost you anything..it’s digital right and if it doesn’t work just delete it.

These options won’t make your camera produce images as well as having professional gear, but it may be a start.

There are some fairly high-end P&S that you can get when your ready to move up in camera. If your ready to look for one Todd Owyoung from IShootShows.com has some great info on cameras in this category. His review is here.

Hope this at least gives you a place to start