5

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / Weddings, Concerts, and
Other Events

    ■   Auto white balance. This is one time that I

don’t worry too much about the white bal-

ance and I let it just run on automatic mode.

The colors of the lights will keep changing,

and many times the colorcasts that are present

in concert photography look great. I do pho-

tograph using the RAW file type so that if I

do need to fix the white balance in postpro-

duction it is easier.

    ■   Continuous autofocus. There are usually

three different focus modes on a dSLR, but

the one that you want for concert and event

photography is continuous autofocus — it is

the best mode to use when shooting musicians

who always seem to be on the move.

have thrown off the metering if the whole

scene was taken into consideration and not

just the area of the visor of the lead singer.

■   High speed advance / High speed continuous.

Setting the camera to high speed advance lets
you shoot in burst mode, where instead of tak-
ing one shot at a time, you take three or four
shots in quick succession. The camera keeps
taking images as long as the shutter release
button is held down or until the buffer gets
full and the card runs out of space. Try shoot-
ing bursts instead of single shots when shoot-
ing a concert; this increases the odds of
getting the perfect moment.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO For this photograph of David Hinds and Selwyn Brown of Steel Pulse, I made sure that the spot meter was on the
underside of David’s visor, which gave me a good starting point for the exposure. I didn’t want the built-in light meter to use the very dark back-
ground or Selwyn’s white shirt. Taken at 1/200 second, f2.8, and ISO 3200.

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