Rock & Roll

My recent Metromix adventures gave me the opportunity to photograph the bands Staind & Hoobastank at Spotlight 29 Casino in Coachella, CA. The evening started with taking photos of concert goers as they entered the show room before the concert. Once the show began, I was allowed to take photos of each band for the first three songs. I'm not exactly sure why the bands limit how long we photographers can shoot but one theory I have is that they don't want us photographers in the way of the audience for the entire concert.

So what to do when you have such limited time? At this point a little experience helps. I've been shooting concerts, usually from a good distance back because I'm usually running a lighting console at the same time, for a few years now. What I do is set the camera in manual mode, the metering mode to Spot and open up my aperture to the max, which for my primary lens is (28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) is F/3.5 at its widest setting. I try to keep the ISO to no more than 800 but will bring it up to 1600 and sometimes 3200 (but it gets a little to noisy for me). My shutter speed varies depending on the lighting but I try and keep it faster than 1/60 of a second. Images Stabilization is definitely on and makes a big difference. One important setting is your drive should be set to High. Even though I usually have the shot in mind, by having the drive set to high, I can press and hold the shutter down to take a few rapid shots. The first shot may be blurry because the camera WILL shake a little when you first press the shutter button down but the second and third will probably be ok and the last show may be blurry as you remove your finger from the shutter.

For this concert, I went back and forth between my 28-135mm and 70-200mm f2.8L IS lenses but in the end I preferred the wider zoom since I was so close and I was happier with what I was seeing in the view finder. I did try aperture priority mode but what happens is since the lighting is constantly changing, if you meter point hits a dark spot, it will slow the shutter speed down WAY to much and you will actually end up with an over exposed image that's also blurry. I recommend playing with ISO and shutter speeds to see the different results you can end up with. I'll crank the ISO up to 1600 when I need to get the shutter speed up (if I'm not using my monopod) and also when I want to get a little more background into the photo. You can find more photos of the concert at the main Staind & Hoobastank Photogallery.

I really like this photograph of Staind Bassist Johnny April (f/4.5, 1/1250, ISO 800 & a little Light Room Love).