The correct camera settings are key to getting great photos in small and murky concert venues. As we've seen and discussed before, the automatic mode on your cameras simply won't get the job done properly. Take the following basic camera settings as a starting point. Get used to your gear and learn where all the buttons are located on your camera, you should be able to find and change the settings even in a pitch black concert hall. Because once you know your gear, you can focus on the more important stuff like what's going on stage. Let's see which camera settings will work best for you when shooting your first concert.

I will break down all the settings for you. It's important that you understand what these settings mean and how you can use them to achieve the best results. I will keep it here at the very basic level with the aim that you can immediately go out after this lesson and start To shoot your first concert exposure modes determine how the aperture shutter speed and ISO settings are selected by your camera. All DSLR cameras from entry level to high end professional cameras have at least four exposure modes programmed out to a P, Aperture Priority A or a B depending on the camera manufacturer, shutter speed priority as a TV and manual and you can find them on the mode dial located on the top of your camera. entry level cameras often have scene modes such as landscape, macro, portrait and sport. While these modes might be a good idea to use in the specific situations they're named after, never use these for concert photography.

The camera takes control like it does when sent to out to end you won't have any idea what the camera is dialing in, and probably Get mediocre shots at best program out to a P. for concert photography, the program out to a p mode isn't a much better option than using the full automatic mode, often depicted as a green square or out to just as in the automatic mode, geo camera chooses the aperture, shutter speed and even ISO when set to automatic. The only difference is that you can manually adjust either the aperture or the shutter speed. Still, you have to keep in mind that the camera is reading the light via the light meter setting and sets the other variables accordingly. Since we have to deal with constantly changing low light situations on stage, your camera will have a hard time getting consistent images, so it's better to skip the automatic and program out to mode on your camera.

Shutter priority. In this mode the photographer sets the shutter speed and tick Cameras sets the aperture accordingly. I don't use this setting for concert photography, because I want to control my aperture myself. The only time I set the shutter speed rather than the aperture is when I want to get motion blur effects. For instance, you want to get a motion effect of a car passing by or you want to get the dreamy or ghostly effect of a waterfall. This setting is a good starting point but I prefer the next two settings aperture priority.

This is the mode I used for the first couple of years when I started out as concert photographer. The aperture priority mode will let you set the aperture and the camera will set your shutter speed accordingly. I used to set my ISO manually. So I started by setting an F number of F 1.8 at my 50 millimeter lens, adjusting my ISO to 1600 and shot some frames. Then I checked the LCD monitor to see if I Got a good exposure. If yes, then I continued to shoot with these settings.

If the photos are underexposed, I use the higher ISO setting. For example 3200 if the photos are overexposed, I lowered the ISO settings to ISO 800. I think aperture priority mode is the best mode to start out with. And if you need some assistance from your camera, you can use the out to ISO setting in addition, manual mode. The manual mode will give you complete control over your camera. This is the mode I currently use the most since this lecture is aimed at photographers who are just starting out.

I will leave the explanation of this mode to the next module. Use your lens lowest aperture number. Set your aperture number to the smallest number possible. This could be as low as f 1.8 which reflects the largest aperture on a 50 millimeter lens. This allows the most possible light to hit your sensor and is a must have setting in ultra low light stage. Conditions use a fast shutter speed.

Most of the time, you will want to freeze the action on stage, so you'll need a fast shutter speed. Try to get at least a shutter speed of one over 200th of a second. And as a rule of thumb, don't drop below 150 of a second. When you're hand holding a camera, use a high ISO, you can either use our two ISO or set the ISO values manually. I prefer to set it manually and start with an ISO setting of 1600. When shooting in clubs with low light situations on stage, out of focus, the out of focus in the camera will make your life a lot easier when used correctly.

I love to shoot with old analog manual focus cameras and lenses for my portraits. But for concert photography, the autofocus setting on your camera is a must. The autofocus function is also tied to the shutter button. In the same way the light metering notice there are different autofocus modes on your camera. But for now I want to focus on the output area out of focus mode. Each camera has a set of autofocus points anywhere from three points in entry level cameras to 65 points in some canon pro cameras, but the amount of autofocus points really doesn't matter for us.

All cameras have the outer area out to focus mode, which lets the camera decide where to focus. This example shows the viewfinder of the Canon 72. Here the red rectangles indicate that the 65 point automatic selection is active, the camera will most likely choose the nearest subject to focus on. This setting will serve you well for your first experiences as a concert photographer and I will discuss the other options for autofocus in the next module. metering modes. Your camera has a built in light meter, which measures the light in a scene.

Depending on this reading, the camera sets the appropriate aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Every camera has different metering modes, all of which will be activated when the shutter button is pressed halfway down. for the beginner concert photographer, the matrix or evaluative mode is a good compromise. In this mode, the camera takes a light reading of the whole scene and tries to match it to a built in database of similar scenes to try to calculate the right exposure. This metering mode is called matrix metering on Nikon cameras and evaluative metering on Canon cameras. You see here a photo of Dolores, or reordan, the singer of the cranberries if the matrix mode is chosen, the camera will take a reading of the whole viewfinder indicated as read overlay.

This metering mode works pretty well in normal lighting situations such as a cloudy day outside, but it will also work for even the late stages. However, this setting is not perfect for concert photography, but it's the easiest option when you're starting out. So therefore, we'll go with it out to white balance. Let me explain what the white balance setting is. Take a piece of white paper and go outside on a sunny day. Look at the paper and it will appear white.

Now go to the shadow and have a look again, it's still white right? Now go back to your house and take a look at the piece of paper in different lighting situations. placed a piece of paper under your desk lamp or a fluorescent light. The paper always looks white because our brain adjusts our view of these different lighting situations. And we always see white when we're looking at a white piece of paper or other objects. We know To be white under normal lighting conditions.

For a camera, it's different. A camera sensor just records the light it sees. Therefore, if you take a white piece of paper and view it under the different lighting conditions outlined above and take a photo, you will see that it sometimes is a blue, red or green casts are shade of color, rather than being pure white. This is also the reason why you have so many different settings for white balance on the camera. You can also see the effect here at this photo of Kirk Hammett from Metallica. On the far left, you see the auto white balance setting off the camera.

In the middle photo the white balance setting was set to fluorescent and you can recognize a blue cast of color. In the right picture to white balance setting shade was used which gives you a warmer shade of color. You can even set the specific color temperature and Kelvin silver concert photography the different white balance setting stone really matter much, so leave the white balance setting on Alto, and you're good to go most of the time. If you have to change the white balance setting afterwards, you can always do this in your post production workflow. And I will talk about this in more detail later. Use the JPEG format.

Jpeg is an acronym for joint photographic experts group, and it's the standard format for all digital cameras. Basically, it stands for a compression of digital images. This format has limitations, but the big advantage is that you won't have to process your photos afterwards. So as a first step, it's absolutely fine. For the people that disagree here, I am a 100% roll shooter. But I think when shooting your first concert, people might not be familiar with post processing raw data.

It might be too frustrating and I want you to succeed from the get go and keep your motivation level Hi. So if you're just starting out and you don't know about the role format, stick around To the cheap IQ format for your first few constituting. If you're already advanced, stay tuned to the next module. Well, I'll explain the settings for advanced concert photographers never use flash. In general, you're not allowed to use a flash in concert photography. Imagine 10 photographers birthday gift flashes at the same time.

This would be quite annoying for the artist. And this might also be the reason why they came up with the rule, no flash in the photo pit. My recommendation is to learn concert photography using the available light in smaller clubs who might be able to use a flash. But if you want to take concert photography serious, you better get used to the struggle of low light. Therefore we discussed the concert photography settings here that work without using a flash. So let's sum up the camera settings you need to master your first concert use the aperture priority mode, set the aperture now offshore lands at its lowest setting like f 1.8 or F 2.8.

Use a fast shutter speed like one over two hundredths of a second and faster. Start with an ISO of 1600 or use the cameras ISO out of setting. Set your outer focus to outer area AF mode used to matrix or evaluative metering mode. Set your white balance to outer if you need to concert photography and you're not used to post process your picture used to pick for months and don't use a flash. As I mentioned before, these settings are the very basic settings to cover your first concerts and to get your first decent concert forges. I'll go into more detail which exact settings the pros are using in the next module.

So it's time to get out. Get to know your equipment and shoot some concerts.