Hi dudes and dudettes,

I’d like to get some advice if I could. My friend is a promoter and his own band is playing at a gig he’s putting on next week. I jokingly mentioned me taking photos and he actually seems keen on the idea.

I’m getting decent at photography during the day, but I fail miserably at low light shots. I was shooting at a wedding last week and the ISO auto defaulted to 6400 and the images looked very grainy.

So, I’ve bought a 430EX II flash to use, but considering this is a metal gig there’ll be a lot of drunk people who won’t want a constant flash going off so I’d like to use it sparingly (although if you guys know of online guides on how to learn flash photography/settings it would be great!).

Everyone is going to be jumping around, headbanging, moshing etc which is going to be difficult due to shutter speed vs low light etc. I usually shoot at a shutter speed of 1/500 – 1/1000 or so due to wanting close to still movement, but I understand that’s going to be next to impossible in such light. A bit of motion blur would be OK (for some shots, ie intentional motion blue, not “oh man I screwed that one up”) but I’d like to avoid it if I could.

So, my gear on the night will be a Canon 650D, a L 24-105, the 430EX II and a 18-55 kit lens if I need it. Does anyone have any advice on this type of shooting?

Greatly appreciated