New favorite picture I've ever taken!

[Roxy Poodle]

I had probably the best seats I've ever had to a big concert on Friday night: I was in the front row of the first side section after the stage for Night 7 of Jay-Z's eight night run at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The seats were elevated about four feet off the floor, so it was a totally unobstructed view. This picture was the result of a little bit of talent, a lot of luck, and some bizarre perspective thing that I still haven't figured out. Just thought it really captured the energy of the show!




It was a little difficult because I was working with just my compact camera, but I got a lot of really decent shots. I haven't finished editing everything, but so far, I also really like these two:






Such a great set of shows! I ended up going to four of the eight shows he played in Brooklyn over the last week, and I'm totally depressed that the run is over! If you ever have the chance to check him out, even if you're not a big fan, don't turn down the opportunity. He's such a charismatic performer, and at least in NYC, he attracts an absurdly excited and fun crowd!

[Eco Ellen]

   You DO like taking concert pictures.  And you do nice work!

[moroccangirl]

You always get great shots!

[Roxy Poodle]

  You DO like taking concert pictures.

Ha! It's really the *only* kind of pictures I take! I did portraits for that singer back in August, and I sat out on my sidewalk two weeks ago taking pictures of these insane Linkin Park toys I got from Japan, but (a) even those were music-related, and (b) those are literally close to the only non-concert photos I've ever taken. It's weird to enjoy a hobby so much, yet be so totally specific about it!

[makeda]

Very nice.  And a compact camera, no less!!!

[Roxy Poodle]

Very nice.  And a compact camera, no less!!!

It's a solid compact -- full manual settings and a bigger sensor than your typical compact -- but yes, still a compact! If anyone's on the market for a compact, I'd recommend the camera I have or its Panasonic equivalent in a heartbeat. (Notes: The Leica comes with Lightroom, so it's worth the extra cost if you need the software; otherwise, I'd go for the Panasonic. Also, I believe both Leica and Panasonic have recently released/will very soon release new versions of these cameras, so now might be a good time to spring for one ... in fact, when I was searching for links for the cameras, I saw that B&H has the Panasonic for $319. This is an absurdly good camera for that price!)

I'm also really psyched about some pictures I took on Saturday night at Santigold's show at Roseland Ballroom in NYC. I was way off to the side, so the lighting was somewhat darker than it would have been had I been dead-on, but I think I managed to work with it pretty successfully. I'm really happy with these three shots. I posted a full set of photos from here show to Flickr.

[makeda]

I looked at the Flickr set.  You are crazy good at this!

[Mrtambourineman]

I have no idea how you get those shots in that lighting!   

They look great. 

[Roxy Poodle]

I have no idea how you get those shots in that lighting!   

They look great.

First of all, thank you to both you and ___________ for your kind words! I'm still very new at this, so positive reinforcement feels better than it really probably should!

As far as getting the shots in low light, technically, it was pretty straightforward. For smaller, lower-light shows, I typically work within the following pretty limited parameters:

- No higher than ISO 400. My camera is totally fine up to and including ISO 400, but image quality begins to degrade after that. Generally speaking, I find I'm better off bumping up the exposure while I'm editing than using a higher ISO while I'm actually shooting. Certainly, there's a tipping point where it's so dark that I'm better moving up to ISO 800 (the next option after ISO 400 on my camera), but I'll generally choose a slightly dark shot at ISO 400 over a still-dark-but-better shot at ISO 800.

- 1/100 shutter speed or faster. Sometimes I'll drop down to 1/80 if the lighting absolutely requires it, but I find any slower than that is just useless for shooting musicians. I'd rather have a dark, but clear photo which I might be able to rescue in editing than a big ol' blur that's useless any way you slice it!

- Aperture as wide open as my camera will allow at the focal length. My camera allows me to shoot at F3.3 at full zoom (90mm), which I believe, at least, is good for a compact. Aperture at zoom is pretty much the key thing I look at when I'm checking out cameras or lenses just because nearly all my usage will be concerts! 

So I play a little within those confines to get the brightest shots. After that, it's mostly about capturing the right moment. I spend a really pretty spectacular amount of my free time either attending concerts, watching live shows on YouTube, or looking at pictures of musicians, so I think I've developed a pretty good sense of what I like and when a "moment" is going to happen. I love (LOVE) taking pictures at bigger shows with crazy lighting set-ups, but I typically can't get the seats at a big show that I can get at the smaller ones, so that's the trade-off. When I do get good seats at a big show, it's more fun than anything else in the world!!! I had sixth row seats this summer to Linkin Park, and I loved every minute of it! Almost every picture I took was usable; in a lot of cases, the only editing I had to do was to get rid of some of the stage junk cluttering up the backgrounds of pictures. Some favorites from that show are here. The rest are here:

[diablita]

wow! 

[Mrtambourineman]

 

[Luckylily]

Love these!