Nikon D4, 85mm ƒ/1.8G and High ISO are great combination for bands

Nikon D4, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 12800, ƒ/1.8, 1/200

I returned to Swayze’s Venue in Marietta last night with my daughter and her friends to see Say We Can Fly.

I put one of his most famous songs here to hear his music. Braden Barrie is a singer who grew up in a small town and felt a sense of abandonment; he shows listeners that no matter our struggles, we always have the power to make it through.

Since I broke my foot less than a month ago, I wasn’t feeling like running around to set up lights. I decided to shoot the entire concert with available light.

A couple of things become a problem when there is very little light in the venue. The primary concern is that bands are moving so slow of shutter speed that they will be a blur.

I love my Nikon D4 camera and combining it with the super-fast lenses Nikon makes, like the Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G and the AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED.

Since Say We Can Fly was the headliner for the night, I took the opportunity to try a few things early on to see what I needed to capture all this with just the lights on the stage. By the way, only three household tungsten light bulbs were lighting the front, which seemed to be in the 60-watt range, with one as a backlight. I think the one in the back is for the drummer to see his drums.

I started shooting the Like Mike band at ISO 51200 and realized that would work, but I decided to continue to compare the different ISOs. But with the punk band Like Mike, I would have had to stay at ISO 51200 because they just bounced around the stage.

Later in the Say We Can Fly set, I would shoot some of the photos at ISO 25600 because I wanted to shoot faster than 1/200 shutter speed. Here you can see one of those photos.

I worked on moving around, trying to capture the slight venue feel, and showing my daughter and her friends down front enjoying the concert.

I also like that my daughter got to meet Braden and interview him for her YouTube Channel.

Besides getting some photos of her interviewing Braden, I also got some posed pictures of her and friends with Braden.

Now the most important photos to my daughter will be the ones with her friends and Braden. One of the front bands got my daughter and friends’ attention, and that was Sanchez.

Here they are with Sanchez.

While I was prepared to shoot low-light concert photos, I also had my flash for a moment just like this with my daughter and friends. There was no light on them, and the flash made this a moment to be held dear to her and her friends.

If I were covering this for a publication, the photos of my daughter with her friends most likely wouldn’t be included like this. Instead, I most likely would have shot a picture of someone taking an image like this to show how this is part of the event.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30