David Emery OnlineHow to be a gig photographer
4 December 2008
I’ve had a couple of people recently ask me what gear I use for photographing gigs and how I go about it, so I thought that I’d write it all up here in a 2 part mini-series. Now, I’m not going to pretend I really know what I’m doing by any stretch, but hopefully some of this will give you a pointer in the right direction.
In this post I’m going to talk about the important bit – taking the photographs – and hence what I use to do it.
Unsurprisingly enough, I use a Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera, specifically the Canon 4ooD. The reasons for using a DSLR over a normal compact camera are legion, but for gig photography the key reason is the imaging sensor: the sensor (basically the digital equivalent of film – it’s the thing that actually captures the image) in a DSLR is far larger than that in a compact, and having a larger sensor means that you get less noise (or grain) in your photos.
Noise is probably the biggest technical enemy of a gig photographer. You are always working in low light conditions when shooting gigs (even if the band is under powerful spot lights that’s still nowhere near as bright as daylight) and – as you’ll see – pretty much the entirety of the gear is tailored to try and maximise the light you can get into the camera. One of the factors that help this is having a camera with good high ISO support – ISO used to be the ‘speed’ of the film you were using, but in digital cameras it relates to the sensitivity of the sensor; the higher the ISO the more sensitive to light it is (and hence the brighter the picture) but the more noise you introduce.
On my 400D I very rarely go above ISO 800 – it does have an ISO 1600 setting, but it’s just too noisy for my liking. For contrast, my previous camera was a Canon G7 compact, which I would never go over ISO 400 for similar reasons.
Obviously my 400D is getting on a little now, having been replaced by the 450D which adds live view, more megapixels and probably most usefully spot metering (which is useful for when you have lots of different lighting conditions in the frame, which you often do with stage lighting). It’s a great camera and would probably be my recommendation if you want to upgrade to a DSLR from a compact and are on a budget.
If you can afford a bit more, however, I’d be very tempted to get the Nikon D90. Without wanting to get into the traditional camera holy war, I generally speaking prefer Canon cameras and at the lower end I think they definitely have the edge as Nikon’s low end DSLRs don’t feature a lens auto-focus motor, which means they don’t work with a lot of lenses you’d want to use. Canon always used to have the edge when it came to high-ISO situations, but in recent times Nikon – with their higher end cameras like the D300 and D700 – have been doing stunning work on this front. Of course, the new Canon 5D Mark II looks amazing as well. In other words, both manufacturers makes great cameras, but don’t forget that when you buy your first DSLR you’re making a commitment to that brand as pretty soon you’ll start investing in more lenses, and lenses will only work for one specific camera type.
So… lenses then. This is the other key benefit of a DSLR over a compact – you can interchange the lens and swap it out for something more useful for what you’re trying to shoot. Most compact cameras have cheap lenses that try to cover the widest range of situations, which obviously isn’t going to cover the particulars of gig photography. The same can be said for the lens that comes with your DSLR – for gig photography it’s almost certainly useless.
One of the key problems with so called ‘kit’ lenses is their high maximum aperture. Aperture is the ‘f’ number you’ll see printed on a lens, and relates to how much light the lens lets in – the smaller the number the better. Most kit lenses have a quite high maximum aperture of about f/3.5 (which normally gets even worse when you zoom in, to about f/5.6) which typically isn’t enough for a gig situation. At the least you’ll want something that goes down to f2.8, if not smaller if you can help it.
Luckily enough, pretty much the cheapest lens you can buy, for either Canon or Nikon, is the 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. You’ll notice that it’s just 50mm – this is not a zoom lens (which is what ‘prime’ means) which is one of the reasons why it can be so good in low light situations. The lack of a zoom is – if you ask me – a benefit, not a hindrance. By not being able to zoom you end up focusing more on the composition instead, which is far more important. The natural tendency is to think that by not being able to zoom you’re going to ‘miss’ photos, but I disagree – you’re just going to take different ones.
I’d even go as far as saying that for the first 6 months of owning your DSLR you should only use the 50mm lens – it’s exactly what I did and I think it’s a great way of learning photography.
One of the things worth remembering about digital SLRs is what’s called ‘sensor crop’. This refers to the size of the imaging sensor; cameras like the Canon 5D and the Nikon D700 are ‘full frame’ cameras, as their sensors are the same size as a traditional 35mm piece of film and hence they have no sensor crop. On cameras like the Canon 450D, the Nikon D90 and most other DSLRs however the sensor is a bit smaller, and hence they have a sensor crop factor (normally of about 1.6, although Olympus cameras have even smaller sensors so they have a factor of 2). What this means in practice is that you need to multiply the focal length of the lens by the crop factor to get the ‘true’ length of the lens – so a 50mm lens becomes a 80mm lens, and a 24mm lens becomes equivalent to a 38mm.
This can be both good and bad – bad if you want to take wide angle photos, as all your ultra-wide lenses become normal wide angles, but good if you want to take zoomed in photos, as all your lenses are now a bit more zoomed in. This works out quite nicely for us gig photographers, as – unless you’re shooting in a tiny venue – you probably want something that’s slightly zoomed in. 85mm has always been considered as a good length for portraits – which is what our cheap 50mm becomes – and guess what? Gig photography is basically just taking portraits (except without all that tedious hiring studios and setting up lights)!
So, after you’ve got bored of your 50mm what next? You’ve got two choices – get another prime (either wider – the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 is a good bet – or closer, with the Canon 85mm f/1.8 being a good choice) or get a zoom, which is what I did. The ideal would be the stunning Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 but that was out of my budget, so instead I got the much cheaper Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8. There’s no doubt this isn’t as good as the Canon – especially at 70mm f/2.8 where it’s a bit soft – but it’s still a very useful lens to have as it covers pretty much the perfect range for gig photography.
There’s one last bit of gear to talk about – flash. Now, I’m not talking about the in-built flash in your camera – you might as well ignore that even exists, unless you want to take extremely unflattering photos. No, what I’m talking about is external flash, and most importantly bouncing flash.
Bounce flash is when – instead of the flash pointing directly at the subject – you point the flash at another surface, with the subject getting the light that bounces back. This leads to a much more flattering diffuse light, and if – and this is a big if, sadly – you’re allowed to use flash then bounce flash is the way to go. I say sadly, as most larger venues stick to the dreaded ‘three songs, no flash’ rule but more often then not they have pretty good stage lights anyway, unlike the places that normally let you use flash which typically have one or two lonely red spot lights, which don’t do anyone any favours.
For reference, I use the Canon Speedlight 430ex but any flash that you can rotate should do fine. If you’re even more ambitious you can start messing around with off camera flash – usually using a cord so you can detach the flash from the camera and aim it separately – but I’d much rather concentrate on taking the photo instead.
To finish up this rather lengthy post I’d like to talk a little about settings and composition. Composition first, as I feel I don’t really have that much to say to be honest – it’s the one thing that you can’t really ‘learn’, it’s more something that either comes to you or it doesn’t. Sure, you can – and should – read up on things like the rule of thirds but it really just comes with practise (and/or talent and luck).
Settings though I can tell you about. You get 3 variables you can play with when taking a shot – aperture, shutter speed and ISO. ISO I’ve already talked about and typically I have set on ISO800 unless it’s a particularly bright venue where I might push it to IS0400. So that leaves aperture and shutter speed. To be able to be in control of both of these it’s pretty vital that you have your camera set in ‘M’ mode, which lets you decide what both the shutter speed and aperture are (instead of letting the camera decide for you). Sometimes – if it’s a bright venue for example – I might use shutter priority, where you set the shutter speed and let the camera sort out the aperture, but it’s pretty rare. In most cases when you’re working in low light the camera is going to make the wrong choice when it comes to settings.
When I was talking about aperture earlier I said that the lower the f-number the better, so presumably you just set it to the lowest possible for your lens all the time – right? Sadly it’s not quite that easy, as the wider the aperture the lower the depth of field you have. Depth of field is the amount of the picture that is in focus, and is a very useful tool to have at your disposal – having a low depth of field means you can nicely isolate your subject by having the background out of focus. However, when we talking about apertures around f/1.4-f/2 the depth of field is really low – we talking about 5 centimetres or left.
This is where we get problems – at 5omm f/1.8 you can quite easily have the microphone someone’s singing into in focus, but their eyes out of focus. Add in to this the constant movement inherent in most stage performances and you can see the problem – at f/1.8 you’re going to get a lot of shots that are just out of focus. So, if the light is good enough bumping it up a little – even just to f/2.5 – helps, but sometimes it’s going to be dark enough that you’re going to have to use it lower then that and cope with the potential for out of focus shots.
The one last variable is shutter speed, and we face a similar trade off – the lower the shutter speed, the more light you get but the more potential for blurriness. Because musicians are typically lively folk and move around a lot we need to try and use as high a shutter speed as possible – ideally 1/125s or greater. If you’ve got someone that doesn’t move much or if the light is really bad you might be able to push that down to 1/80s but really – the higher the better!
I think that pretty much covers everything gear and shooting wise – in the next instalment I’ll go through what happens after you’ve taken that amazing photo…