Before you start your journey to becoming a rockstar concert photographer, you need to master the basics of photography. In this lecture, I'll explain the three parameters aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in a way that you don't have to fear them anymore. Let's start with aperture. The aperture is the opening a hole located inside the lens and allows you to decide how much light hits the digital sensor of your camera. This hole is formed by a series of overlapping metal plates, or diaphragms, and can be adjusted with your camera to make the opening larger or smaller. The larger the opening, the more light is allowed to hit the sensor also called large aperture.

The smaller the opening, the less light can enter small aperture. The same principle is behind the way the iris works in our eyes. apertures are also denoted by F numbers, the smaller The F number, the larger the opening in the lens. In the beginning, this nomenclature can lead to some confusion. And it took me a while to figure out how f numbers work. Technically speaking, the F numbers are ratios, and determined by dividing the diameter of the lens opening by the focal length of the lens.

As I want to explain this to you in a way that it doesn't require to have a PhD in physics to understand, I leave you with this explanation, and rather focus on the practical aspects of how to use these f numbers to your advantage as numbers like 1.4 to 2.84, or 5.6 denotes the widest openings, depending on your lens, which will admit the greatest amount of light as numbers such as 811 16 and 22 reflects the smallest openings which lets in less light. When you set your lens to the smallest aperture number, you are shooting wide open. If you choose larger aperture numbers, you are stopping the lens down when you increase the F number by a full stop, or one stop increment, for example, from F two to F 2.8. The lens let's in half as much light as it did before. This means that F four allows half as much light as f 2.8.

And f 5.6 allows half as much light as f four. On the other hand f eight, lets in twice as much light as f 11 and F 11. That's in twice as much light as f 16. Why would you want to change the opening in your lens? Well, you might think that it's justified controlling the flow of light hitting the camera sensor. It sounds obvious that when shooting on a sunny day in bright sunlight, you should make the whole body aperture in your lens smaller.

Whereas when you're shooting a concert in low light conditions, you should set the aperture as wide open as possible to let enough light in to hit the camera sensor. But the aperture has an even more important function, namely to control the depth of field. Simply speaking depth of field is the area of sharpness within a picture. I'm sure you've already noticed this in magazines of photography books by professional photographers. Some photos contain models where only the eyes of the person are in focus, whereas the background is blurry. When focusing your lens on a certain point.

Everything in the image on the same plane is in focus as well. Everything in front and behind this point focal plane is Not in focus. So the depth of field determines the area that's in focus. The aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the outer focus areas of an image is referred as Okay, Japanese for blur, until you can see a portrait of William Duvall of Alice in Chains, I did a festival and only his eyes are in focus, whereas the background is out of focus. What influences now this depth of field, there are three factors. aperture, this for me is by far the most important factor in determining that field, a small f number.

A large aperture not only lets in more light, but also decreases the depth of field. This will result in a very shallow focus area in your picture and an outer focus foreground background. The wider the aperture, the smaller the F number, the smaller the depth of field. So portrait photographers often use an aperture of F 1.4 or F 2.8. To achieve this effect, subject distance, the distance between you and the subject also determines the depth of field. The closer you are to your subject, the shallower the depth of field makes a huge difference if the artist on stage is two meters away from you, or if he leans over to you and sinks into your camera and the focal length.

The third component that influences depth of field is the focal length of your lens. The longer the focal length, for example, 200 millimeter, the shallower the depth of field, the shorter the focal length, for example, 35 millimeter, the deeper the depth of field and that's also the reason why landscape photographers use an F number of F 16 or F 22 because they want to have the whole scene focus to get the fastest lens within your budget. And with fast lenses I'm referring to lenses with a small aperture number, such as f 1.4, f 1.8, or F 2.8. I shoot 95% of my concepts shoot with lenses with small f numbers. Most of the time you have to deal with ultra low light situations during concerts, so the only way to get a decent exposure is to let as much light into your camera as possible. This you can achieve by setting your lens to the smallest f number.

Additionally, your photos will have a shallow depth of field, which helps blur out distracting stage elements behind the subject your shooting. For example, if you focus on the eyes of your model, using an aperture of F 1.8, the ears will be already out of focus. That's why it's important when using small aperture numbers to always focus on the eyes of the musicians on stage. shutter speed. shutter speed is the second component in achieving a correct exposure. When you press the shutter on your camera, a device called the shutter inside your camera opens and allows light to pass from the lens into your camera body to hit the camera sensor.

The time the shutter stays open allowing light to hit the sensor is called shutter speed. This means that the shutter speed controls the effect of motion in your photo amongst other things. fast shutter speeds freeze the action. You can see here a photo of apocalyptica where I use the fast shutter speed to freeze the action. slower shutter speeds allow the action to be recorded as blur. The various shutter speeds are indicated as whole numbers such as 60 125 but 250 in your viewfinder or on your camera display.

However, these numbers are actually a fraction of a second like one over six Have a second one over 125th of a second, or one over 250th of a second. Most new cameras have the ability to set the shutter speed between very slow, for example, 30 seconds to ultra fast like one over a thousandth of a second. shutter speeds over one second, are marked with the quotation marks after the number. If you go from a shutter speed of one over 125th of a second to one over 250th of a second, the shutter stays open for half the time. One over 125th of a second is twice as long as one over 250th of a second. So half the light will hit the camera sensor.

This might sound complicated, but once you've thought this through, it's simple. The higher the one over x time is, the faster the shutter speed. So one of Over 250th of a second is faster than one over 125th of a second. Whereas one over five hundredths of a second is faster than one over 250th of a second. So in concert photography, I shoot 99% of the time with a fast shutter speed of around one over two hundredths of a second to make sure I get sharp images of the artists, sometimes a set of slow shutter speed to play a part of the image. One great example is to blur the drumsticks of a trauma.

The trauma usually sits relatively still, party's hands and drumsticks are moving fast, so you can capture a sharp image of the person with blurred drumsticks, which gives the feeling of motion to action. The same applies to guitarist who's drumming hand is moving fast. As a rule of thumb, one over the focal length of the lens is the slowest shutter speed you should use when hand holding your camera. Because of camera shake. So for example, if you're using a 50 millimeter lens, you should use at least one over 50 of a second. When you're using a 200 millimeter lens, then you should use at least a shutter speed of one over 250 of a second, and so on.

If the subjects are moving and rocking, and the band members usually are, you will need even faster speeds. So remember, you will get blurry photos because of your camera shaking, or because the subject is moving too fast. But in both cases, your shutter speed is too long or slow to freeze the action. Another important setting on your camera is the ISO value. ISO refers to the sensitivity of your sensor. In analog times the sensitivity of the film was measured in ISO, the higher the ISO setting for example 800 the less light is needed to achieve correct exposure.

However, the higher the ISO value, the warmer the camera sensor gets and the more noise or crane as it was known analog times you will encounter in your photos. There are ways to reduce the noise during post production, but the aim is to keep the ISO as low as possible, typically in concert photography, ISO settings of 801,600 3000 206,400 depending on the stage lighting and the venue, this comes with pictures from solid cheese's and there was almost no light onstage. Therefore I had to use a high ISO setting of 6400 to get a decent exposure. You can see the crane especially at both sides of the light beam. However, crane doesn't have to be a bad thing. And the effective crane is working great when converting your photos into black and white.

Okay, let's have a look at the Holy Trinity and how aperture shutter speed and I Work together. If you change one variable, you will have to adjust the others as well. To get a photo with the right exposure, say you set the aperture to F 1.8 and an ISO setting of 1600. The camera sets a shutter speed of one over 14 of a second. This shutter speed might be too slow resulting in blood photos. So you can reduce the aperture number since it's limited.

For instance, we're using a 50 millimeter f 1.8 lens, however, you can crank your ISO up to let's say 3200. And from ISO 1600 to 3200, it's one stop. Therefore your shutter speed will be one stop faster. So it's not one over 42nd anymore. It's one over 80s second, it's one stop. So I want you to get a feeling for these numbers.

So we now have an aperture of F 1.8 ISO 3200 and the shutter speed of one over 80 of a second is still with me. If there is an action onstage and the musicians are moving fast, you need a faster shutter speed. So guess what, we'll have to crank the ISO up to 6400. But remember, the higher the ISO, the more noise you get in the resulting photo. So if we use ISO 6400, we get a shutter speed of one over 160th of a second, which will probably get the job done, but you will get more noise in the final image. Another way of looking at it is that you'll get exactly the same exposure in the following examples.

So In example one we have an aperture of F 1.8. We have a shutter speed of one over 250th of a second and an ISO setting of 200. We will get the same exposure when we set an aperture of F 2.5. The shutter speed of one over one 125th of a second and the same ISO setting of 200. The same exposure applies when we're using f 2.5, a shutter speed of one over 250th of a second and ISO 400 and we get the same exposure when using f 1.8. A shutter speed of one over five hundredths of a second and ISO 400 however, the photo will have a slightly different look.

So In example one we have a very shallow depth of field because we're using aperture of 1.8. So very small f number, we get a blurry foreground and background because of the wide open aperture. In number two, we are stopping down the lens to F 2.5 which results in a less shallow depth of field. But possibly we get more blur of moving objects because we are using a slower shutter speed. In example three, we have the same Have fields compared to example two, but possibly we get sharper moving elements because we're using a faster shutter speed one over 250th of a second instead of fun over 125th of a second we used in the example two, but we also get slightly more noise in the photo because we're using now an ISO setting a 400 instead of 200. And the number four, we have the original shallow depth of field from example one, but we have quite fast moving objects or elements will be frozen sharp, because we're using a really fast shutter speed of one over five hundredths of a second and we get the same amount of noise as an example three.

So it's always a compromise between getting sharp images and having noise in the picture.