One topic rears its ugly, mutated face every week without fail across the many message boards and Flickr groups on the web. What should I buy?
In this, the first part (1of3) of my buyers guide to concert photography I will be looking at camera bodies. Not a particularly sexy topic but we all have to start somewhere and so many get it so very wrong.
I am going to break open the myths and truths behind what you really need to start out in concert photography. Hold tight because you are in for a bumpy and perhaps controversial ride.
Money… Burning…. Hole… Pocket…
First off, let me start by telling you about my Camera gear. At the beginning of 2007 after the final burial rights of my beloved Pentax ME, I decided it was time to investigate this digital photography lark.
After much reading, standing in shops holding and playing around with things, I purchased a Nikon D80. This is still the camera I use today.
Believe it or not, this is still the standard spec camera on the market. 10 megapixel sensor which gives you a big enough RAW image to print a good A4 print without thinking. If we are honest with ourselves if we were to ever print, it is unlikely to be bigger than that.
That is not of course the maximum size you can print at, you could paste on the moon with a 2MP camera if you had the time, but that is something for another day.
Don’t Believe The Hype
The two big contenders on the market are Nikon and Canon.
Pro-market camera bodies can cost several thousands of pounds and boast a tonne of exciting sounding features. Functions such as ISO6400, 30 Focal Zones, Sync Sockets, 4.5” Rear Screen, 24.5MP FX Format CMOS Sensor, all sound great, and you would think that because they boast large numbers they are important.
Unless you are already a seasoned vet at Rolling Stone (in which case you may as well stop reading this you know it all don’t you smarty pants?) then you have absolutely no reason to re-mortgage your house for a Nikon D3X or a Canon EOS MKIII.
Are You A Loser?
No. I am a realist. There are two key facets for this reasoning. Usable functions and price.
I will start with price. Why in your right mind would you pay £2999.00 for a camera body when you can get one with probably 2 perfectly good lenses for £500? No more needs to be said on that matter.
The next is usable functions. If you only want to play DVD’s you buy a DVD player. You don’t buy a DVD and VCR Combo with a coffee maker built in. The same logic should be applied to cameras.
If your main interest is concert photographs you are going to use about 2% of the features on a pro camera body.
So what if it has 24 focal points? You are only ever going to use 1 focal point if any.
You have one subject and they are going to be moving around. Most concert photographers who are not manually focussing, something which I have only recently started to strive towards, will use a single focal zone. This is to reduce focal speed, and to make sure you are only focusing on your subject not the whole stage.
Taken with just one focal zone which was positioned over the singer's face.
Higher ISO doesn’t mean higher quality
High ISO numbers quickly become a hot potato when it comes to low light photography. It is also an area which is not fully understood by many.
I am going to try and debunk digital ISO for you in as simple English as I can.
It. Does. Not. Exist.
Certainly not in a concept which can be compared to film photography.
How Film ISO Works
In the days of film high ISO film used certain chemicals which made it overly sensitive to light. This meant that the film needed to be exposed for shorter period of time to get the image as intended. These chemicals also had another affect on the film which is known as grain.
This is caused by silver halide forming globules on the film during the developing process.
It can look simply stunning.
Shot with ISO 800 film. Soft but looks great
Sadly digital ISO and ‘digital noise’ do not share these wonderful characteristics.
How Digital ISO Works
Digital ISO works on processor speed. It is how fast you want the image processor to allow for recording the light levels of the shot.
The faster it has to be done the less information is recorded and the processor literally guesses at what should be where. This creates what we all know as noise.
At a digital camera’s lowest ISO (commonly 100) it will produce a 100% accurate shot. As you reduce the ISO the number of pixels recorded also reduces.
This basically means if there is a section 10×10 pixels wide and they are all predominantly black, then it will take a guess that surrounding images are also going to be black.
The most obvious side affect to this is that edges become fuzzy and you lose sharpness on someone’s face or the curvature of a guitar.
Taken as ISO 800 with digital. At 100% you can see noise
Most cameras even the most expensive start to look a bit blotchy after ISO 800 at 100%.
A good friend of mine and photographer for Art Rocker Mike Burnell once said to me ‘stop shooting at 800’.
Sound advice. Why did he say it?
Because there are other ways of produce better shots with a lower ISO. We will be looking at one of these in the next guide on lenses.
Taken at IS0 400 digital with flash. no noise at 100%
Photo agencies and libraries are quite picky about high ISO – low light photographs and will rarely take them because of being ‘soft’. Many magazines and newspapers will refuse them on similar grounds.
Spending long periods of time in Photoshop or using noise reduction software is the only work around to this. Save yourself the time and just shoot at an ISO you know will give you a crisper image.
In the next guide we will be looking at lenses. You will learn why the heralded ‘nifty fifty’ should NOT be your first lens, and in fact should never find its way into your bag.
You will learn why the heralded ‘nifty fifty’ should NOT be your first lens, and in fact should never find its way into your bag
Wow, I look forward to you arguing that one!
What’s wrong with my nifty fifty? Can’t wait to hear what you gotta say on that.
Good article, good blog. Like it
That. Is. Not. How. Digital ISO. Works. Do. Your. Homework. First. Next. Time.
@jufemaiz
Thank you for your post. It is harder than I thought to explain how it works without going into excessive detail.
The link found by clicking on noise to a wikipedia page does go further into detail on how digital noise occurs which is a common side affect of digital ISO.
There is also a very in-depth explanation on Film Speed and signal-to-noise-ratio relating to Digital ISO here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_index.
To follow on from my original post, before the processor is provided with the image information it defines how sensitive to light the image sensor should be. Higher ISO means more sensitive sensor.
However this sensitivity can cause digital noise, which takes many different forms.
I highly recommend the link which I have just added to the further reading section for more on exposure in digital photography.
Please do keep commenting and on future posts. I greatly appreciate and value all your contributions.
interesting thoughts mr A. And i look forward to the nifty fifty advice as well. i am kinda split on the noise issue- the new 5dmk11 has done some very impressive things according to a few friends. but what i do question is the overall need to shoot that high in the first place, back in the day maybe a pro would push a 3200 to 6400 but surely not that often. are we creating needs that arent there with these iso’s….
A good point DD.
I have also wondered about this.
I hope that part of this series of posts will make for better decisions on the type of venues you are shooting in, which will be covered more later.
As we all appreciate the key thing in photography is light. In a venue where you are not allowed to use flash, the chances are the lighting system is immense.
A real world example: If you are shooting at Wembley Arena, you can quite comfortably use ISO 400/800 to get a clean exposure without using flash. The only reason I can see for needing to increase that is if for some reason you were having to use a 400+ zoom lens and you are losing 2+ stops on the zoom.
Digital ISO is the one thing which has always bugged me and it is great to see such a debate already starting on its merits. I think for me it is all because of the desire to compare the mechanical performance of the chip in the same way as the chemicals reaction on film is not just.
As better sensors are produced do they create better images? Yes they do, they also produce them better at higher sensitivity ratings. My point is ISO 1600 film is ISO 1600 film, there are slight difference between manufacturers but a spade is a spade if you like. With a digital sensor you cannot compare it in such a way.
Another real world example: look at image comparisons on dpreview.co.uk between any two cameras. The differences can be vast. It is not the same as loading two different cameras with the same ISO rated film and then comparing the end results.
You use only 2% of your camera’s features? That amounts to probably the on-off switch and the removable lens cover!
@XR
That would probably be a lot less than 2%
I can only refer to what I know is in my Nikon menu system but Think about all the slideshow functions, the creative settings like processing images on-camera, black and white conversion or sepia that kind of thing.
Battery discharge
Switch between pict-bridge,usb and PC Sync.
I can think of a few things that I setup when I first configured the camera and haven’t touched since like folder names or function button settings.
It’s a bit like a mobile phone. It makes calls and you send SMS/MMS on it. All the other stuff is great but most people hardly ever touch those features.