Concert Photography Using a Pentax MZ 50

[al_penco]

Hi can anyone help me, Im passionate about concert photography and

low light photography but every manual and bit of information I read

on the subject only confuses the hell out of me when I take it back

to my camera. Has anyone had any luck taking great concert

photographs using a Pentax mz 50? I need some help in how to set up

my camera so it is on the correct shutter speed and apeture so I

don't need a flash. I have a zoom lens of 100 - 300. Any help would

be greatly appreciated. Im sick of wasting film and being

disappointed with the results

[Jochen_S]

No, I don't know the MZ 50, but my K 1000, LX and SuperA did a good job. Is your's a AF camera? - I wouldn't take my SFXn to a concert, but haven't tried the *istD yet.

 

O.K. Your zoom is slow, the AF might be blind and there's anything but light. - Use faster film. TMY pushed to 1600 ISO at very bright concerts. TMZ or Delta 3200 at usual concerts but forget about pushing them higher than 3200. Get a Monopod. Stop at least one stop down, focus on the performers eye, read your exposuremeter without pointing it into the stage lights, check shutter speed either you read 1/250 handheld or maybe at least 1/60 on the monopod or you should decide to go home. Buy some old 135mm f2.8 and a 50mm. Concerts are to dimm to shoot zooms.

[bill sullivan]

Can you say why you are disappointed with your results? Pictures blurry? Colors not true? Too many hotspots? I wouldn't worry about the camera. I would look at the lens and the film. You've got a lot of variables to play with between lens speed and film speed, but first: What's wrong with your pictures? And also (another question): What lenses do you own and how fast or slow are they?

[stemked]

I'd second the "get a faster lens" especially the 135mm f2.8. Unless you zoom is a Sigma 100-300 f4 you are likely dealing with slow glass. Unfortunately with the MZ-50 it must be an A, F or FA lens which are generally more expensive.

 

What you really need is a spotmeter, try and read off something that is close to neutral grey. That leaves two directions, one is to buy a separate spotmeter or the easier answer is to get a body that has a spotmeter already in it. The ones I know include the MZ-S,ZX-5/MZ-5, ZX-5n/MZ-5n, Z-50p, Z-5p/Z-5, Z-10/PZ-10, Z-20/PZ-20 or PZ-1 and PZ-1p. Many of the Z and PZ (save the PZ-1(p)) are pretty inexpensive likely less than a spotmeter. The advantage of these other lenses is that they aren't as picky as the MZ-50 and you can buy less expensive 135mm f2.8 lenses including screw mount lenses for a song (plus the $20 adaptor). Otherwise you are dependant on center-weight readings, ok if there is very even lighting on stage but otherwise a problem. Remember when you read you'll need to determine someting that is 'neutral grey' to get an accurate reading.

[al_penco]

Im really only a beginner so experience is very limited. I took some pics at a recent concert and I was using a 800 speed film. I understand that the photos will come out grainy with this speed of film but I really want to capture the coloured light that was in affect during the gig. The only traces of colour that showed up were a slight colour around the edges of the subject. The back ground was black as anything. My lens I have is a sigma lens and goes down to f4.5 I don't understand how to set my camera up to utillise the correct apeture and shutter speed. I know this is probably incorrect but I had a shutter speed of 1/250 and my apeture was setting itself between 6 - 5, I couldn't get it down.

[petre_petrov1]

Al, your question is not well posed. You shouldn't be asking about the camera. You can take any SLR to a concert and get great pictures; and even with the F5 you can get bad ones. The question is really about 1) lenses; 2) film; 3) proper technique.

1) Ideally, you should get a f2.8 zoom.

2) Fuji Press 800 is a great fast film. The grain is there, but you would have to enlarge quite a bit to see it.

3) A monopod is a must. You can shoot at 1/60 or even venture into 1/30.

[stemked]

Al,

 

Another basic question is how you take the photo. There are four basic ways, manual, aperature priority, shutter priority, and full program. In manual you set both the shutter speed and aperature. This is going to be the most difficlt way to shoot in changing light situations. Second is shutter priority where you set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperature, useful if you wanted to pick up say intentional movementin the shot, but likely not all that useful for you. Aperature priority where you set the aperture (likely at your widest setting) and the camera sets the shutter speed is going to be most useful. Full program is likely fine too (the camera sets both shutter speed and aperture) but personally I think you are better off in aperture priority.

 

Metering is always going to be tricky, more so if you are using center-weighted lighting which is what your camera has. Imagine the players have a bright light and the background is dark. A center weighted lens will make an average of the two, overexposing the forground and underexposing the background. A longer lens should help by putting more of the subject into the center weighted portion of your camera.

 

And then there is processing. If you put your film in a bin at a place that does cheap processing the machine will try and correct the lighting. If there are odd colored lights at the concert there can be some very odd results.

[bill sullivan]

Al,

 

Obviously, you are struggling with a slow lens. Your choices here are to use a faster lens (like a 100mm f4 or even a 50mm f1.7) or faster film (like ISO 1600). Case closed. Douglas (above) mentioned metering as being tricky, and he is absolutely correct. There is much more to metering than I can put into a brief reply here but I would learn all I could about metering, bracketing exposures, and the latitude of film. Try the photo.net Search facility for openers. One other untouched-upon subject that might be useful to you is the kind of film you are using. Is it a daylight film? Have you tried tungsten film? Tungsten film is balanced for incandescent lighting. Once you get your exposures right, you might like the result.

[andy_aitken]

I used to do a lot of (rock) concert photography with Pentax kit and this is how I got my best pics.

 

Get there early and get your choice of position. 1600 speed film: Slower is usually too slow, faster is too grainy. I liked Fuji Neopan 1600, Kodak Tri-X pushed to 1600 and Fuji 800 and 1600 colour neg film. Manual camera (MX for me) The conditions (flashing lights etc) often fool AE/AF SLRs. 50mm f1.4 (f2 would be fine), 105mm f2.8 lenses Something like an 85mm f1.4 or f2 would have been ideal but the 50 and 105 were always good enough. Focus on the musician, then if he leans forward 6" you lean back 6" etc.

 

Even the it's all a bit hit and miss, you need to shoot about 2 or 3 rolls then pick 1 or 2 good shots from that. IF you are allowed to use flash use a long shutter speed and some flash: and I mean from 1/4 second - 1 second that way you get the motion and the sharpness together.

 

I know this isn't the equipment you have but it is relatively inexpensive these days.

 

Here's a couple of examples:<div></div>

[andy_aitken]

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[bill sullivan]

Andy makes an excellent point when he says to shoot 2 or 3 rolls and pick 1 or 2 good shots from that. A good question for you to ask of this or any other list, Al, is how many good pictures per roll do people consider a good shoot? I don't know if the answer is quite as low as Andy put it, but it isn't much higher than that. For me, I would have been thrilled with 3 or 4 nice (to me) pictures in a 36-exposure roll. That's 10 percent.

[andy_aitken]

I hate to say it but that's exactly how most of the pro's work. They'll burn through half a dozen rolls per concert using different settings and angles and lady luck will almost always deliver at least 1 publishable good 'un out of the 200 frames taken.