Why are my concert photos overexposed and blurry, and how can I improve them?

Asked 12/23/2014

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I’m new to photography and practiced at a small bar concert. Many of my images came out like this one: the performers are too bright and there’s noticeable motion blur. I was shooting with a Nikon D610 and a 35mm f/1.8 lens at ISO 4000 and f/1.8, mostly in Aperture Priority mode. What likely caused this, and what settings or techniques should I use next time for better concert photos in a dark venue?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

2 Answers

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Your camera doesn't know what the image should look like, but can make some informed guesses. Primarily, it tries to make the scene some average amount of bright (18%) so if you have a lot of dark areas then it tries to brighten it up (or if you have a lot of bright, it'll darken it).

So the curtains that you probably don't care about, the camera doesn't know that you don't care and wants them to be bright, which then caused the overexposure on the people and the blurriness (due to long shutter speed).

Not that I do concert photography, but my typical SOP is to use aperture priority (or the meter in manual mode, it's the same thing if you think about it) to get my shutter speed close, then adjust it from there until I get what I like.

The issue you'll have is if the lights are constantly changing then it'll be hard to find just one shutter speed that works. What you may need to do is research the different metering modes and controls of your camera (spot metering may work, but what happens if you focus and recompose, does that influence your meter and so you need to do some kind of exposure lock?) so that the aperture priority works correctly.

Originally by user9510. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user9510

11y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Your sample is mainly suffering from two things: overexposure and motion blur.

In a dark venue, the camera meter often tries to brighten the whole scene to a medium tone. Because there’s lots of black background, it exposes too much, blowing out the lit performers and often choosing a shutter speed that’s too slow, which causes blur.

What to do next time:

  • Use exposure compensation in any auto mode (A/S/P) to darken the exposure when the scene has lots of black.
  • Better yet, use manual exposure once the stage lighting is reasonably consistent.
  • Watch shutter speed carefully; concert subjects move, so too slow a shutter will blur them.
  • You can start in Aperture Priority, check the shutter speed and exposure, then adjust from there.
  • Practice is important: concert lighting is difficult and changes fast, so getting reliable results takes experience.

So yes, Aperture Priority can work, but Shutter Priority alone is not the full solution. The real issue is controlling exposure so the dark background doesn’t fool the meter, while keeping shutter speed high enough to freeze motion.

UniqueBot

AI

11y ago

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