Concert Photography Part 1b - Bodies

The Body

So, what about the camera body?? Use the one you have until you can buy the one you want. Ideally the body you use will be relatively modern (if it’s a DSLR) because the newer the technology, and the higher the quality body, generally the less noise your sensor will give. Your camera should be able to manage working at 1600 ISO or higher (3200 ISO ideally), which is why I said the technology should be as new as possible, older technology sensors have significantly more noise than those of newer bodies. The important thing to remember is it’s not always about price and cost, after long deliberation, I eventually opted for the EOS5D over the more expensive professional models simply because the 5D generated less digital noise than any of the other models available at the time, an you’ll probably find yourself wanting to lift the exposure on a shot quite frequently in post processing, which is where digital noise really shows. The noise generated by my EOS 20D at ISO 3200, is far worse than when the same settings are used on my EOS 5D, and less noise makes for a cleaner image. Ideally, the body should have spot metering, and at the very least partial metering (sometimes I prefer partial over spot, I’ll discuss more in the piece on technique). The frames per second isn’t an issue for me, because I often know what shot I’m looking for based on the mood of the gig at that point in time and fire off 2 or 3 shots to get the shot. Others I’ve worked with, use high frames per second, and blow through a memory card every 5 minutes. It’s down to personal style. In camera metering systems that you’ll be working with are all quite different from brand to brand and even in some cases from camera to camera, the more you live with it, the better you’ll come to know it, I’d like to say you can use your light meter, but as you know the reality is that the pre-gig lighting is normally quite low and the lights are enormously changeable and most of the time you’ll be working too intensly to have the luxury of time to even think about pulling out a light meter, best to leave it at home… less to carry .

What about the quantity of bodies?? Well I work with two sometimes, and other times that’s just overkill. As an example, when working Wembley or another large venue, you almost certainly want two bodies, you want the close-ups and you want the wides, and because you may only have 2 songs in which you can get your shots, time is of the essence. This means no time to change lenses, two bodies, one with a 16-35mm or 24-70mm another body with 70-200mm or similar, and swap around as you need. For smaller more intimate venues, or places where perhaps the stage isn’t quite so elevated, or you have plenty of time to change lenses, one body would suffice. Again more discussion of this in my piece on technique. The bodies I use are a Canon EOS20D and an EOS 5D. That’s where I’ll leave it for the moment, the next article up will be part 2 - Technique. Hopefully this has been useful to people, I’ll probably add to this article based on peoples feedback and if I remember anything I forgot to add in when I wrote it originally.