My Dying Bride, live at Arvika 2004

Taken with the cheapest canon telezoom (80-200 f4,5-5,6 usm) andKonica Centuria 400 asa. Handheld from the audience at 200mm @~1/20sek. Scanned on a canon 5200f flatbed. Yeah, I'm a poor student..

I had some problem with purple colour casts with the Konica, soFuji 400 would be a better choice.

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Philip

Try a higher iso film (800, 1600 or 3200) don't use your zoom under 1/250 sec - the rule is to not use a speed slower than the focal of your lens to not get the blurred effect from camera shaking.

As for the cast? Don't care top much about it, the blur is the issue of this photo. About your lens? It is true it is a bit slow, why not try open air festivals it will not be an issue there, or buy a cheap 50mm 1.8 lens? It will give better results than a 70-200 f2.8 lens. And it cost less than 100 euros. But of course you will need to be quiete close to the stage, which means doing smallest venues...

My 2 cents ;)

Ah, thank you! I really appreciated the comments! There are many areas for me to improve.

Of course I have a 50mm f1,8. But overall I don't find it useful for concert photography. It's way way sharper on negs, but after scanning I can't really tell the difference. The added brightness is not useful since the DOF is too short. Also, it's trickier to get a good exposure readings without the tele (without spot metering that means full manual, on the other hand I think the above photo was full manual so..)

As for the blur, about equal parts are from the scanner and from motion blur. The general rule to avoid motion blur is fine, but I do have pictures taken handheld at 1/8sek that are "ok". Unless someone bumps into me =)
Going above 800 asa gives me worse quality, grain is more of a problem than motion blur. There's not much improvement for me going from 1/45sek to 1/250.. (with my equipment).

I uploaded the picture mostly since I break all the "rules". Slow film (400), cheap slow telezoom, handheld at ~1/20sek, taken from the audience with people bumping into me, developed at the cheapest mini-lab I could find, scanned on a flatbed.. But I think it turned out fine :-P

/Philip

Oh another rule you break - motion photography start down to 1/15 sec and slower ;-) It seems optic laws are not the same for you and the rest of the world, lol

Read this, they had the same discussion we got here ;)

yeah its not great as its soft, but then again you shot from the crowd as a paying customer so you shouldn't expect much more than record shots. The colours are okay, but the crop simply doesn't work. Gig photography is hard to master and you'll only do that by getting passes to get you in front of the crowd or having the proper accreditation to move around. You'd have got a better shot using the 50mm and cropping it after in PS.