Had my first real taste of Event Photography last night. Took some pics at a gig for 'The Automatic' at work. We put big events on quite often, and I've taken pics at them. But this was someone using our venue rather than us putting the event on. So I got the standard 'first three songs' etc. clause that I usually get to overlook when it's our events.

Money prevents me from getting some nice fast primes for this sort of thing, so I only have a general purpose zoom (17-50) but at f/2.8 it's not terrible I guess.

But the lighting was dire, three songs lasted all of 9 minues or so, and in the little gap between the crowd and stage I had about 3 positions to move between (stage left, stage right and beneath the lead singer's nose). I definitley had my fair share of stress trying to get some decent pics. ISO 1600 (even tried 3200 at one point) isn't great noise wise and 800 was not giving me enough light.

Overall, I think I need practice and to figure out how to use spot metering to my advantage. Also, and I think Lady E brought this up on an other thread somewhere, I usually use center spot focussing and recompose, though this time I tried using different AF points to shoot without recomposing. Either It's just not as good, or I'm really bad at focussing this way as I have an extrorinarily high number of OOF shots and low keepers. Though not sure if this may be a side-effect of the worse than usual lighting?

If anyone does a lot, or any, stage Photogrpahy I would appreciate any tips or tricks. Some of my events just go really well and some go horrible. Though looking back it might just be the fact that the music I like makes good photos and the music I'm not so into makes ordinary or bad ones.

Anyway, that's my story. And here's a couple of the good ones I lucked out with (Facebook size I'm afraid)

Great photos for a "first timer" imho

What body are you using? The lower end of the range tends to not have particularly good fast focus in low light. The EXIF has pretty much been completely stripped.

But you get the mood alright

Yeah, my little batch resizer kills all the EXIF. Need to record some scripts in PS to do the resizing and still keep it all really.

Body is a 50D with a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 and occasionally (not in any of the above I think?) a 580EX II firing off something bouncable.

In true "it's not what money can buy" fashion though. I've managed better results with a 350D and much cheaper lens before. So I'm currently deciding if it's my photography skill (being shown up naked on a big MP camera and manual settings) or was actually contributed to by the poor lighting and stress of having a only few minutes to get what I needed.

Here's some quick grabs from my own 350D that I (personally) prefer, though may not be as 'technically' correct. (a couple from the old 300D too)

Edited 24 November, 200817 yr by Mort