400 2.8 VR would be perfect. . .

One more tip, set your body on continuous mode and just let it rip, if you focused correctly, you should at least get one good shot, if camera shake is your issue. Just get a really big SD card and delete all the ones that don't come out right. It's digital, you'll be fine with taking one or two more photos.

You certainly need to get everything else down though, focus, exposure, etc.

For this specific purpose, I would use the 50mm f/1.4 G or 85mm f/1.4 G. The G lenses are required to provide autofocus on your D5000. Chances are autofocus won't work precisely for f/1.4 or f.2.0 at the distance you're shooting - that's why the D300s has autofocus calibration for individual lenses. With a little testing, you can tell where it wants to focus - it should focus consistently a little too far or a little too close, and once you figure out what it's doing you can adjust for that. If you focus on a rack of CDs at your shooting distance from a shallow angle, you'll get an idea of precisely where the lens wants to focus compared to what you see in the finder. I found my D200 was focusing about 3 CDs past the one I thought I was focused on - enough to give imprecise focus under these conditions. You may have to send the combination in to Nikon to have it calibrated.

If using manual focus on a 50mm f/1.4 or 85mm f/1.4 without a focus motor, then you need to depend on the focus indicator - the viewfinder will not help you focus above about f/2.4 - it will be using only the center part of the lens for focusing because the finders are intended to maximize the brightness for f/2.8, and they do that by ignoring the light from the outer parts of the lens. That's true of all the current generation Nikons unless you purchase a 3rd-party finder screen.

No flash - bad form for a performance, and I'm surprised you weren't kicked out.

You've gotten a lot of good advice from those who have already responded. Here's mine:

Shoot at ISO as high as you can, until you can shoot at 1/125. (With my D200, I limit to 400 ISO; the D5000 should do much better.) If you can't get to 1/125 with ISO, then with a 50mm I would try shooting at 1/30 or 1/60 if the lighting is dim. You'll miss a lot of shots because of subject movement, but the lighting will be acceptable. If the lighting is enough that this gives you f/4 or so, go to 1/125 - that should stop much of the subject motion. With the 85mm f/1.4, I'd shoot at 1/60 at the slowest to limit camera movement unless the ISO has to be so high that the images are full of noise and noise processing artifacts that they're not useful.

It sounds like you may have picked up on some of the methods of holding the camera steady - brace your camera support elbow on your knee or against your side, wrap the strap tightly around you so you're constantly putting force on it, breathe in and then shoot carefully on a controlled exhale like you were target firing a rifle, etc. A small tripod against your chest can help with this too, though pay attention so you don't shoot on a heartbeat.

Good luck! I love shooting live performance, but the lighting in small venues can truly be a challenge.

Side note: D-Town TV is back this week, and one of the first things they talk about in this episode is how to shoot in low light inside, during different events, including concerts! Some very nice tips. I tried a couple of them - which go according to many of the things you guys had suggested - and it worked great during some home tests. :-) I highly recommend to anyone that's trying to get better at doing the same.

heartyfisher: it wasn't really by choice. I adore concerts, especially small venues, and one thing just naturally lead to another. :-)

Adamz: I'll definitely consider the vodka suggestion! :-)

Say, has anyone tried those Gorrilapod SLR (or SLR zoom) for SLR cameras? Any good? I considered one of those, to help with the "shaky" side of it...

I often use AutoWB (I'm lazy) BUT I realised some time ago that choosing specific WB manually is better.
If you tweak too much the WB in post, you sometimes loose dynamic range and/or tonal values. I agree that shooting RAW allows me to change the general WB afterwards but if the shots are important, I'd choose carefully the WB and shoot in RAW.
Last time I got weird results, I shot interiors with tungsten WB and in ViewNX (or CaptureNX or Lightroom) I decided to change the WB to shadeWB, and I saw some red tonal values missing (like a clipping... ?!)... I haven't found any documentation about this issue on the web.

I have a feeling, that getting a high frame rate in RAW is related to the size of your buffer and also related to the write speed of your flash card.

If you are shooting fine large jpeg at 8 frames a second, you will have approximately 40Mb of information/sec to write to your card.

If you are shooting RAW, you will have double that or more.

Newer cards will write upwards of 60 Mb/sec so in Jpeg, there is not really a problem, not really even with a slower card, because the buffer comes into play.

The problem happens, when the card cannot write fast enough and the buffer backs up to overflowing. This is generally the case when shooting in RAW.

This is my simplistic understanding of this issue, and I think the answer is to spring for a really "flash" flash card.

TaoTeJared, welcome. I use lightroom, too, but use raw for the same reason you use jpg—to save myself time (with the sync settings button there). I think long exposure noise reduction is applied to raw files. I also think Pete's right that you can get 8 fps in 12-bit raw on the D300.

Pete, don't worry at all about white balance when shooting raw. Like TTJ said, there is no white balance applied except in the metadata, which the raw converter will read to get it in the right ballpark. I leave my WB on auto except sometimes to shoot video, which so far is not in raw format. ;-)

most of the times Auto WB, post processing in aperture - it's like two click solution to correct WB in many files.

Nikon software has Picture Controls built in so it does auto CA.
For batch conversion you could try View NX, it is free and often gives better results.
All camera settings are applied during the conversion and not directly to raw NEF so you can change them in post production, and in batch as well.

If you shoot Raw Zero white balance settings apply so it does not matter what the setting is. In actuality, no settings (Sharpening, color, noise reduction, etc) are applied to a Raw image so settings don't matter. (Someone may know of a couple but what I understand nothing is applied.)

When I shoot Raw, I shoot 14 bit for better graduations. When shooting RAW you can not get the 8fps - even with the battery grip. That can only be achieved with jpg.

Personally I shoot all jpgs and sometimes Raw + Jpg since I want to shoot more and spend less time on a computer. I find that if you take a few moments to set up prior to shooting you can save hours on the back side. Of course there are exceptions depending on what you are shooting. Largest time saver I found, ExpoDisc "neutral" filter from ExpoImaging. Using that to set the custom WB while shooting JPGs I find that I rarely need to do much color correction other than a slight warming. I do not like the "warming" filter from them though - with my D300 it tends to be way too warm for my taste.

I use Lightroom and it works great on "batch" type items. Unlike many other programs, I can make the changes to the first photo in a series then copy those settings to the rest of the photos (while viewing them.) Works great for my work flow. With Lightroom you always convert all files when you "export" them for viewing. Hard to explain but it takes care of everything for you.

I use auto and correct in post.

Still using Bridge/ACR for batch conversions.

Some particular lenses (like 20/2.8 & 10.5/2.8) seem to benefit from in-camera jpeg conversion - automatic CA correction - only if one of the WB presets available works. Still too lazy to do it in ACR unless I have to... Should probably get NX2...

Now that I decided to shot everything in RAW, I have a few questions:

DO you use Auto WB, set it, or it does not matter will change it later. I use Auto

12 or 14 bit RAW, I use 12 bit, because my D300 can only take 8frames/sec in that setting

Outside NX, how do you Batch convert, I have so far used ACDSee Pro 3, seems to look OK, and the program flows fast for sorting pics and gives me a app 9MB Jpeg file at best quality

Thanks

Pete

I wouldn't go with f1.2 - it's going to be too shallow, also there's sth wrong with Your shooting technique - unless the musicians were moving very quickly (which I doubt) You should be able to freeze them with shutter speed of 1/200 - and You didn't (most likely there's a motion blur involved - if Your hands are to shaky, than get a shot of vodka before the concert, it iwll help You stabilize the camera). also there's sth wrong with color balance - it's way to warm. are You shooting in RAW? or jpg only, if the second than switch to RAW+jpg mode.
as for lenses, well 50/1.4 would be a nice investment (if You like this kind of perspective), other "cheap" option is to get 35/1.8 (for me a better option).

NikoDoby said:
Your shutter speed was too high. Yes you'll get movement with lower speeds but being that your using a digital camera it's no big deal. Just keep moving the speed around until you find a balance.

The picture of the drum and guitar looks like you just missed the focus. The smallish viewfinder on DX cameras makes focusing lenses manually pretty difficult. It's even more of a challenge in such dark conditions. Did you try using liveview?

Forget about using flash and a tripod. It's distracting to the performers and a hassle/dangerous to move through a crowd. A trick I often use to get steady shots on non VR lenses is to shoot off three or four continuous shots. As if you were photographing a sporting event. Out of those shots you'll more than likely get at least one sharp photo. The rest will be blurry from your unsteady hands but that's OK because it's digital and you can just delete them.

Remember that f2.8 and lower has very shallow DOF so focus is literally "paper" thin. The closer you are to the subject the more noticeable and difficult it is to get sharp focus. In other words if you focus on an instrument your subjects eyes won't be in focus.

Oh and even though it might not seem like it, there is a big difference between f1.2 and f1.8. Although at f1.2 your margin of focus is very very thin.

i second this post entirely.

please don't consider using your flash (even built in) at a concert. it is extremely distracting to the performer, especially in a small club (and especially if you are in the front row...)

if you don't mind the manual focusing trade in your 1.8 for an old 1.4, which should run you well under 50 bucks if you look around.

Your shutter speed was too high. Yes you'll get movement with lower speeds but being that your using a digital camera it's no big deal. Just keep moving the speed around until you find a balance.

The picture of the drum and guitar looks like you just missed the focus. The smallish viewfinder on DX cameras makes focusing lenses manually pretty difficult. It's even more of a challenge in such dark conditions. Did you try using liveview?

Forget about using flash and a tripod. It's distracting to the performers and a hassle/dangerous to move through a crowd. A trick I often use to get steady shots on non VR lenses is to shoot off three or four continuous shots. As if you were photographing a sporting event. Out of those shots you'll more than likely get at least one sharp photo. The rest will be blurry from your unsteady hands but that's OK because it's digital and you can just delete them.

Remember that f2.8 and lower has very shallow DOF so focus is literally "paper" thin. The closer you are to the subject the more noticeable and difficult it is to get sharp focus. In other words if you focus on an instrument your subjects eyes won't be in focus.

Oh and even though it might not seem like it, there is a big difference between f1.2 and f1.8. Although at f1.2 your margin of focus is very very thin.

Put your camera on manual mode, F1.8 and shutter speed around 1/60 - 1/125 depending on how much movement there is.

Keep cranking up ISO until you get a correctly exposed picture. If High ISO is still not enough, shoot in RAW and crank it up in Post processing.

As for white balance, if auto isn't working well, ask the person in charge of lighting and see what temperature the lights are set to.

Concert photography is challenging and the conditions you have described makes it a tough task.

* The kit lenses will be next to useless unless you use them at their widest or close to it. Ie keep the 18-55 around 18-22.

* the D5000 can handle High ISO fairly well. I would set it at 3200 or 4000 ISO. PP The Higher ISO 6400 to B&W photos could be fun.

* Shutter speeds of 200 is on the high side for these conditions. I would try to keep it to 125 or even 60 to maximise the lights. Shoot off a few in succession.

* You can use a small tripod. You don't need to extend the legs. its extra mass helps stability. I brace mine on my chest/tummy/belt/hips and you can get 1-2 stops of stability from that.

If you are into these kinds of photography than a dedicated low light lens is required.
for really low light the primes F1.4 are the way to go eg Nikkor 50 1.4G, or the 30 mm F1.4 HSM Sigma.

otherwise consider the F2.8 Zooms in the 24-70 ranges( eg Nikkor 24-70, Sigma HSM 24-70, Nikkor 28-70, Tamron 28-75, Nikkor 35-70. Or longer with the 50-150 Sigma)

Also consider the normal ranges F2.8 lenses like the Nikkor 17-55, Tamron 17-50 VC,

You have found a tough niche to be interested in :-)

I'm still wondering why it wouldn't go above ISO 1600. It should go to 3200 and then three more increments to H1.0 = 6400.

Raw processing probably isn't as hard as you think. Nikon View NX has a slider for exposure (like boosting ISO after the fact). White balance is a little bit trickier, but still not really involved—I'm pretty sure they let you set a gray point by clicking a gray area on the photo (it's been a while). Or, if you want a treat, download the lightroom 3 beta version, which will work until the end of June. Adobe will probably release the production version in mid-June. One warning, though: once you shoot raw and see what you can do with it after the fact with a capable raw processor, there will probably be no going back.

edit: gelu, you beat me to the lightroom suggestion. You posted while I was writing, I guess.

If it were me, I would sell the AI-S ESPECIALLY if you're using a camera that isn't the D300 or above and buy the $125 50mm f/1.8D. OR if you really wanted to use all the light you can get, pick up the $325 50mm f/1.4D. OR if you really wanted to splurge, get the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 (which on a DX body like the D5000 doubles as a nice portrait lens).
I would even suggest the $450 85mm f/1.8 (or if you really had cash burning a hole in your pocket) the $1000+ 85mm f/1.4.
None of these choices are prohibitively expensive and will all produce great results. You get to use Aperture priority mode, AF, metering, and most other innovations in photography invented during the last 20 years.

I was once in the exact same situation as you. It was a small concert for my school paper. (the only ambient light was the red ones you see in the background of the first picture)

*Dead Link Removed*

as the light does not change much manual should be fine. I found that the best option was to shoot in shutter priority.

if you look at the second one i took, it was one of about 50 shots i took of the same thing. i tried different shutter speeds from 1/20 to 1/5, all at ISO 1600. I just kept on shooting and hoped that some would come out with minimal blur. I also used a gorillapod that i held against some speakers. All the pics were underexposed, but i was able to bring most of them back decently enough.

Lucky for me that guy moved very little, so many of them came out pretty decent. Given your equipment your only choice it to shoot slow and hope. If you can bring in a gorillapod or brace yourself against something you should get decent results.

And obviously RAW will give much better results, as you can adjust exposure much more.

like other suggested, do raw and jpeg, then narrow down your good shots(no motionblur or hand shake) by looking at the jpegs. Then take the best raws and fix them up.

If you dont have any RAW experience, just download lightroom 3 beta. It makes the process seemless. You just move the "exposure" slider over a bunch and you simply get great results.(within reason of course). also LR has great noise reduction that really helps at 1600 ISO.

Thanks Jonny for pitching in (and nice to see you again!).

So, following up on that reply, I can't set it to Aperture mode either, only complete Manual Setting, meaning I control both the Aperture and Shutter Speed, not the camera. And, as I said, I was trying to avoid using the camera's flash (I caved in after a while, figuring out there'd be no way to get any images without it).

I do like the idea of using more and more RAW and getting used to manipulating it. Haven't gotten into it yet, have to admit.

So, back to the original question, given the setup (D5000, AI-S 50mm 1.8 lens or the usual 18-55 VR and 55-200 VR culprits), any other tricks you guys would recommend, or a better lens for this situation? (I do go to concerts like this often, and this was the first I had the chance to take this set-up to, thus the post).

BTW, I even considered for a second bringing a tripod, but there's absolutely no way to use one in this kind of environment. Also, I did play with shutter speed, but, with singers moving or even just mouthing, anything to slow would come out blurry no matter what...

Danny's 50mm lens won't meter on the D5000. He has an AI-S version.

Welcome to the forum, Adam and Mathias. I agree about shooting raw, not jpeg. White balance is really tricky in a situation like this and you want all the latitude in post processing that you can get. If you're not comfortable processing raw files, shoot RAW + JPEG until you have time to learn and just keep the NEFs as backup. Raw converters just get smarter and smarter, so you'll thank yourself in the long run.

Try this ,
1. Set your Camera to A(Aperture Priority)
2. Set your Aperture anywhere from F1.8 to F2.8.
3. The shutter should be automatic.

This works best with a flash such as SB600 or better (focus assist) to quicker help you focus (if you had a D90) but it still brightens up the photo.

I used a Nikon D80, 50mm 1.8D, and SB900 flash, (I shot in Raw too, it helps).

I did some Club photography and here are my results:
*Dead Link Removed*

Ultimately, (once you get paid :) you may want to pickup a:

17-55 F2.8 lens
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-17-55mm-2-8G-ED-IF-Nikkor/dp/B000144I2Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273452802&sr=8-2

And

70-200mm F2.8 VR

DannyP said:
With the camera in Manual

What is set to Manual exposure or AF? You only have to focus manually with your 50mm and metering works fine.
It seams that your shots are underexposed, you should set your camera to aperture priority center weighted metering, ISO to 800 and EV correction to -0.7 and point to the singer, it will work just fine, if not decrease EV correction to -0.3.

Well, my advice, if the perspective is OK with you, try the 50mm prime at as big aperture as possible. 1.8-2.8. Simply because it lets in much more light to the picture then either of your zooms. If it doesn't give you to shallow Depth of Field.
Record the pictures both as JPG and NEF. Because you can always 'light up'/add light to a too dark picture using contrast and light settings in GIMP/Photoshop/Whatever_you_use_to_treat_your_pictures. But it is much harder to make a too bright/overblown picture become darker and look good.
This works a bit OK for JPG, but you have bigger margins using NEF-rawfiles.
If you ar at all able to treat raw files?
Hopefully this helps.
Oh, now I even have looked at your pictures.
If you stored them in NEF as well as JPG you can fix them using the Flickr editing tools.
It can probably be done with the JPG as well, but I think that the result, considering colors, would be better and easier using NEF.
But it is very possible.
That, and adding a little 'sharpness' using the tools and you should be home free.

Regards, Mathias from the dark of Sweden