How can I use flash at concerts to reduce strong colored stage light without losing sharpness?

Question

I photograph small live concerts in very poor lighting using a Canon 5D Mark III, a Speedlite 600EX-RT, and fast 35mm/50mm lenses. I typically shoot around 1/100-1/160 s with wide apertures (about f/1.4-f/2.8) to keep motion blur under control.

A recurring problem is very strong colored stage lighting, especially red. White balance correction in RAW helps only so much, and pushing it further can make the image look unnatural because the scene was lit mostly by one color.

I’d like to add flash so the light is more neutral, but not completely overpower the venue lighting. My goals are:
- reduce some of the ambient color cast, but still keep some of the concert atmosphere
- keep a shallow depth of field
- keep subjects sharp

What is the best way to balance flash with ambient light in this situation, and how do shutter speed and flash power affect both color balance and sharpness?

user17441 · Answer

I'd like to see the "greenish" version of the photo. Could you please use a WB pick-up tool on the white letter "C" in the background (or whatever the figure is, looks like a C..) and then add the resulting photo here.

In case it is not clear, adjusting whitebalance has to be done in a RAW converter software like Lightroom or RAWTherapee or suchlike, not in an image editing software like Photoshop (if there is a WB pick-up tool in Photoshop even, I wouldn't know;)

However, I did try a tune-up in GIMP for what little can be done to colors after a photo has been converted into a JPEG image. The guitar player seems to have a white T-shirt on. I tried to turn it from dirty reddish white to cleaner white, and see what effect this has on the whole image. I think it is still clear to everyone that there is red lights out there.

enter image description here

Therefore, the solution to your problem could well lie in post-processing, not so much in your camera settings. Perhaps try to forget the -1 EC, so you could avoid brightening a too dark photo in post. A flash can do miracles sometimes, but the band on stage might not like it too much, and you would also like to avoid the dust and fiber flying in the air, as a flash makes it very visible in a photo.

How can I use flash at concerts to reduce strong colored stage light without losing sharpness?

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