What I Started With
My first cameras were just general-purpose ones. My first DSLR was a Canon 20D, and that was also the camera that I took my first live music photos with.
I had the 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens, which is an awesome piece of glass in general, but with its wide aperture throughout, it’s supercool for the low light situation you encounter at rock concerts. It soon was obvious that my camera was my limiting factor:
- The autofocus was slow. Really slow. Later, I would bring both the D3 and the 20D to concerts, and I wanted to smash the 20D on the floor in the pit it annoyed me so much.
- There was a whole rainbow of noise, even at what I nowadays consider “low” ISO speeds. My concert photos looked all mushy and grainy at the same time even at ISO 800.
But it was a great starting point. I learned to master the equipment I had (and boy can a camera have many buttons ;-) , and was able to make a much better decision once the time had come that my equipment was the limiting factor of my live photography growing.
Nikon D3
Having been a Canon photographer so far, it seemed natural to me to upgrade to the then newly out 1D mk2. I had never followed Nikon or any other brands since I considered that just out of the question for me. Once with a brand, always with a brand.
I talked to a good friend who frequently criticised my band photography, and he urged me to look into the then-also-newly-out Nikon D3 for shooting live concerts. His point was simple: What do you need more megapixels for, if all it does is adding is more noise? The D3 has *less* megapixels, but the individual pixel on the sensor is bigger. Thus, less noise.
The specifications of the camera convinced me to switch brands, and so I got myself the D3. I remember walking into the venue on my first concert with the new camera and just idly turning up the ISO just to see how far it would go. At 5000, I decided that that was now ridiculously high, and photographed the concert at that setting. No noise. And an autofocus and continuous shooting mode that not only deserve their name, but also live up to the high demands I have when standing in front of a live band in the photographer pit.
Unfortunately, I “only” could afford one Nikon lens, so I kept shooting concerts with two cameras, the Canon 20d with the 24-70mm and the Nikon D3 with the 70-200mm, for quite a while.
Nikon D700
Having two cameras when shooting live music or other shows is awesome: I don’t have to switch lenses. Which not only means I have more time to take photos during my three-songs-only timeslot, but it also means that I get less dust into my cameras. Considering how much of a nervous wreck I am every time I have to perform heart surgery clean a sensor, that’s a really big plus!
Moreover, having a backup in the unlikely case that your Nikon should refuse to work when you’re standing in the pit (or the crowd…) taking photos of the concert is good for my nerves.
So once I had stocked up the photography budget enough to be able to afford a 2nd camera for shooting concerts, I had to decide which one to get. Besides the obviously still limited budget, I had another dilemma to solve:
- If it was going to be my backup camera when shooting concerts, I wanted it to be as similar to camera 1 as possible. Nobody should notice if camera 1 stopped working during the 2nd song or while the band was doing their best move of the night and I had to switch to the backup.
- Once I was going to spend that much money, I wanted to widen my possibilities. Different cameras are good at different things; and why would I spend a lot of money on something I already have…
So essentially I both wanted the exact same camera (a D3) a 2nd time, and I also wanted a totally different one. Thankfully, Nikon D700 solves that photographer’s dilemma very elegantly: It has the same sensor as the D3, but at the same time, if I don’t add the battery grip, it’s much lighter and cheaper. So there it is, my camera-shaped weapon number 2 of choice for the taking of photographs at concerts.
Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR
Taking photos at concerts asks for a range of about 24-200mm. Any wider than that will give the photos a cool fisheye look, but most stages are too small for that and are just going to look very empty and very distorted through a lens that wide. A longer lens might help getting a portrait of that guy at the keyboard in the very back, but at most concerts, there’s never good light on the guys in the back. And even if there is, chances are the fog machine put enough particles between me and the subject to totally mess up the photo.
I mean, sure, I’ve seen a photographer from Keystone carry around a lens the size of an average toddler (and using two double tele converters on it) at some concerts, but I doubt I would have a use for that animal very often.
Back when I bought my Nikon D3, I still had the Canon 20D with a 24-70mm f/2.8, so I was going to cover the other half of my desired focal length with one third of Nikon’s “holy trinity” of zoom lenses, the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR, which back then only existed in its 1st generation.
And when taking photos at concerts, you definitely want f/2.8. Or lower, depending on how much money you have in your live music photography budget. You wouldn’t even believe how many stages are lit very dimly during the first three songs – sometimes I think they do that on purpose because they don’t want the concert photographers to have any good pictures…
Nikkor 50mm f/1.4
I sold all my Canon gear because the 20D and its slowness and noisyness was driving me nuts. Now I only had the 70-200mm, which can be pretty long in a lot of live concert situations.
But since I had bought the 70-200mm, I also didn’t have any concert photography budget left, and so I couldn’t afford part 2 of the “holy trinity” of Nikon zoom lenses just then.
In came the fixed-length 50mm at f/1.4, at a fourth or fifth of the price of the 24-70mm. It’s a super sharp lens that I also love for portrait photography. And it goes all the way down to f/1.4, so in case I’m taking photos in a very shady club, I’ve got an extra stop of light.
Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8
The 2nd part of the “holy trinity” of zoom lenses for Nikon cameras is my go-to lens. It covers anything from wide angle full-stage shots to close-up shots in live concert situations; and as its sister, the 70-200mm f/2.8, it’s extremely sharp.
Filters
I protect all of my lenses with UV filters. Not because the sun would shine very brightly at live music events, but because there’s beer and cigarette smoke and rain and other stuff flying around. In my opinion, protective filters are the most looked-over photography accessory any photographer, professional or amateur, should have – whether they’re taking pictures at concerts or not.