Camera settings for Jazz concerts

[Steph]

Next Friday and Saturday, I'll be shooting a Jazz festival (offical photog but on a voluntary basis )

I've never done that and I'm hesitating on the best camera settings to use. I'll be with my 7D and the 70-200mm f/2.8L II IS and the 17-55mm f/2.8 IS.

Should I:
- Use spot metering + focus & recompose. Isn't that slow and can cause OOF shots at 200mm f/2.8?
- Use spot metering with AE lock and then recompose and AF with the proper AF point. Also require going back and forth to the player's face.
- Make a light measurement during the balance and go with fixed settings in M. I shoot in RAW.

My hypothesis are that (1) there will be light enough not to go beyond ISO 1000 with my 7D and (2) that a Jazz concert lighting doesn't change much during the set.

I'm sure you have many advices to give me

[Dr Croubie]

I've shot a few concerts, on a 7D but also recently on Film.

The easiest thing to do, in my experience, is M (well, the film bodies all have to do this anyway). I shot a whole concert, the film was obviously always the same ISO (4000 using Delta P3200), wide-open aperture (f/2.8 or f/4 depending on lens), and 1/30s (bit slow, but they weren't moving much, and the lens was 300mm on a tripod at the back of the room). I just got it home and scanned it, they were all pretty much perfectly exposed, nothing that couldn't be fixed in PP, boosting up dark areas works surprisingly good.

Using the 7D, I've tried Av with fixed ISO, Av with auto-ISO, Tv (1/100s or so) with auto-ISO (which just makes it shoot wide-open anyway, before it starts bumping up the ISO), using all of centre, spot, centre-weight, evaluative metering (with evaluative normally I have to shoot at -1 or -2 EV Comp because it's generally bright-face on black-background). And when i get home and look at them, they're all taken within a stop of each other. So I've just ended up doing M for most things, once i've taken a few Av shots to get a light reading. Anything within +/- 1 stop or even more can just be moved around in DPP when RAW-converting. As always, expose as bright as possible without blowing highlights on faces, once your highlights are blown, then there's no hope...

[Steph]

Thanks Doc. That confirms a bit my initial ideas. I'll go to something smaller in a pub tomorrow (Thursday) night to give it a try.

[Steve U]

What no fireworks or flames at a jazz concert???
Great advice from Doc.
Remember the further you are away and hence the longer the lens, the faster the shutter speed for sharp images.

[Steph]

What no fireworks or flames at a jazz concert???
Great advice from Doc.
Remember the further you are away and hence the longer the lens, the faster the shutter speed for sharp images.

Yes, so roughly the 70-200 @ 200 on a 7D means that 1/250 is the minimum without taking into account the little help I get from IS.

[Steve U]

Sounds about right Steph.

[Dr Croubie]

There's going to be a trade-off between noise and motion-blur though.
If for a given light you can get 1/250 at iso3200, you can get 1/60 at iso800. With both lenses having IS, motion-blur from camera shake will be eliminated either way, so all you have to do is worry about motion-blur from the subject.

1/250 iso3200 will stop all but the fastest action, but it's always going to be noisy.
1/60 iso800 will get some shots with motion blur, but a lot less noise.

So, you get a lot of noisy shots, or you get half as many better-looking shots. What to choose? Why not try both, see what you like. Shoot half at high-speed-high-iso, then try dropping it down to slower-speed-lower-iso. Unfortunately with the back lcd screen you don't get to see motion-blur easily (well, you can, but you gotta zoom in a lot and scroll around with the joystick, during which time you've missed a whole bunch of shots). So for the first few gigs (practice if you can), try a whole lot of different speeds, see how well you do and how many 'keepers' you get. The definition of 'keepers' can vary, some people are happy if they keep 1 shot in 10, some are unhappy if they throw out 1 shot in 10. I'm happy if i get 1 'money-shot' per night (and that's just an expression, i get no money at all)

[Dr Croubie]

And some samples why not. I had to upload new ones because the original gallery had links off and i'm too lazy to figure out how to turn them on.
So there's only a few here, but you get the idea...

7D, iso800, EF 100/2.0, 1/160s, f/2, -4/3EV, evaluative metering, Av, AI Servo, and a cheap chinese Star Filter





These 2 shots are why I love my Zeiss Sonnar 180/2.8:
7D, iso800, 1/200s, f/2.8, -2/3 ev, evaluative, Av, manual-focus from a tripod at the back.





5D2, iso400, 1/50s, f/2.8, 0ev, evaluative, Av (I borrowed a mate's 5D2, and only at the *end* of the night i bothered seeing if it was in RAW, it wasn't, so I had to live with the jpegs it spat out. The 5D2 is shocking (compared to the 7D) in getting white-balance right, so all the shots were yellow. I did what I could in Gimp to fix it, but i'm not much for PP.





And one more for Motion Blur:
5D2, 180/2.8, iso800, 1/60s, f/2.8, 0ev, evaluative, Av:

[Steph]

Nice shoots. I see that you always have a bit of negative exposure compensation on your 7D. I guess this is to have a better representation of the real atmosphere rather than a correct exposure that shows something brighter than it was actually.

I'll do as you say, a bit high-speed high ISO and a bit of lower speed lower ISO. I think I prefer a bit of motion blur (can be very nice actually) and less noise. I don't expect big prints but rather web publication so I should be able to get away with ISO 1600 or perhaps even 3200. I don't mind having only 10% keepers or less so I'll probably spend more time with settings leading to better shots even though less of them.

[Steph]

By the way, I see that you use Smugmug. To enable external links for a gallery, just go to Tools (in the top right corner), gallery settings, and in the Security & Privacy section, click external links: Yes.

Cheers,
Steph.