Creative photography

[CassandraSays]

Hey all, I'm trying to find a good not too expensive camera for concert photography and have been experimenting with various models. I took these with a Canon G10, which I'd never used before, and I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is a problem with the camera itself, my screwing up the settings, etc. Ie, is this something I could potentially fix by changing the settings? This effect doesn't show up in all pictures, only some of them, and I was messing with the settings so I don't remember what I had it set at other than that I think I had the ISO set at 1600, which may have been a mistake. Suggestions/ideas? What's going on in these pictures?

[bdery]

Hello!

My first question would be : was there smoke on stage? This might be the explanation of what we're seeing. Maybe the strong lights saturated parts of your sensor, also.

I think these results are pretty good for a compact at ISO 1600! Very nice, indeed. Noise generated by the sensor probably accounts for some of the effect you see. But since it didn't happen on all pictures, I would tend to blame the lighting conditions onstage.

for concert photography, in general, the larger your sensor the better your images will be, because you will want to increase the ISO (as you did). That means a DSLr would be a "better" choice, but also a more expensive one. And a more cumbersome one. The decision is yours, and I think it's great that you experiment with various models. That way you'll get the best camera for you.

by the way, regarding settings, your digital files retain the information about your shooting parameters in the EXIF data:

http://www.digicamhelp.com/glossary/exif-data/

[CassandraSays]

I don't think there was any smoke, as far as I recall. Definately not heavy dry ice. If it is just light saturating the lens would adjusting the ISO downwards help? I noticed that the pics where the light is dimmer came out much clearer. If I see that effect happening again what steps would I take to counteract it while I'm shooting? I'm still very new to digicams and trying to figure out how to make all the settings work to my advantage!

[bdery]

I think your best bet would be to try to shoot when the lights are not pointing towards you. That's probably the safest step to take. Lowering the ISO could help (though I'm not 100% since it depends on many parameters) but you might get more motion blur that way.