How to use your camera to take the clearest pictures when watching a concert

1. ISO400 to ISO800 sensitivity

Although the lighting in the auditorium of Jay Chou and other singers' concerts is very dark, the light on the stage is completely different. Under the illumination of spotlights, the performers can receive enough light to be photographed without a flash. If you use f/4 aperture, ISO400-800 can often provide a shutter speed of 1/125 second or above, which is enough to freeze the performer's movements without significant changes in movement.

2. Use focused metering

Compared with the background, the performers on the stage appear to be quite bright when illuminated by spotlights, and the light difference between the subject and the background is very high. So big. If you use the camera's preset average metering, the metering will be affected by the dark background, and the subject will be severely overexposed. As long as you use focused metering to lock the performer's brightness, the problem can be solved. The method of locking exposure varies from camera to camera. For models with more automatic functions, half-pressing the shutter button will lock the exposure. Most of them do not have independent exposure lock buttons. You can lock the exposure before taking the actual shot, and then press the shutter after recomposing the picture.

3. Focus

Digital cameras all have multi-point autofocus functions. For example, CanonEOS10D has 7 autofocus points. Although you can manually set the position of the focus point, when shooting a concert, you can rest assured to use the camera's automatic focus point selection function. Because the brightness of the performers during the concert must be the highest, the chance of the camera selecting the wrong focus point is very slim. By eliminating the worry of focusing, everyone can focus on exposure and composition!

4. Pay attention to daylight white balance

Light color matching is one of the most exciting aspects. However, if you use the automatic white balance mode, the camera will whiten the lights at the scene, and the photos taken will be completely different. It is best to use the daylight white balance setting, so that the color of the photo will look more original.

5. Pay attention to black and white clothing

I mentioned that everyone should use focused metering, but when the performer wears all black or all white clothing, the camera's metering system will be misled. The photo is very likely to have serious exposure errors. So if the performer wears all white clothes, we need to increase the exposure by about 1 to 1.5 levels (i.e. +1.5EV); if the performer wears black clothes, we need to reduce the exposure by about 1.5 levels.

6. Turn off the flash

If it is too far away, turning on the flash will not be of much help in photographing the concert. Instead, it will cause reflections from the smoke at the venue, making the photo gray. Turning off the flash makes the picture clearer.