In the first part of this news I briefly covered some technique and behavior related introductory issues. In this second article I will explain how to set the camera to start shooting. Needless to say, the first photographs will always have to be considered just mere tests, aimed at finding how to change the initial settings. Basically, the whole thing goes through the usual pattern of trial and error, at least until your experience will suggest settings good enough to take successful shots from the beginning.

Now, let's examine how to set some of the most useful features of the camera.

LCD screen brightness. If you can adjust the LCD screen brightness, set it to a mean value: if the display is too bright, even underexposed shots might look correctly exposed and you will discover the truth only later, while reviewing the photos on your pc.

Operating mode
Set it to manual. You will want to control both aperture and shutter time.

White balance
It is a critical setting, since it determines how accurate, fine and natural the color tones of your photographs will appear. If you shoot in raw mode, you can set white balance to "automatic" mode and deal with it later, when you convert the raw files to jpeg or tiff images: this is absolutely the best option. If your camera only can save images in jpeg, or any other non-raw format, you will have to find a good setting "live". Often, the "tungsten" option will do. However, certain halogen spotlight emit a white, terribly cold, light, which makes skin green-ish, smooths reds and milds midtones into gray. If this is the case, "tungsten" would turn everything to blue: a better option can be "cloudy" or "shadow", which warm tones a bit, just as if you were using a "skylight" real filter. Don't use the "custom" option (which teaches the camera which color is assumed to be white), since it would compensate for spotlight colors, and your photos would lose a significant feature.

Metering mode
On stage, the contrast between shadows and lights is usually very strong; in addition, spotlights draw deep and clean cut shadows near brightly lightened areas. Under such conditions, cameras' metering systems may fail, if they try to calculate an overall reasonable exposure. If you can control the way your camera does metering, force it to use the smallest possible portion of the frame: this feature is commonly known as "spot metering". Always remember to check the exposure on the brightest spots of the subject: an overexposed detail, which results in a white spot in the image, is gone forever.

Aperture
Most of the times you will be forced to shoot with a wide open iris, to convey more light to the sensor and use a faster shutter time. This way, your photos will have a shallow depth of field (good for portraits and details, less good for band photos), but also less blur caused by movement (yours and subject's). So, start with the minimum f/number your lens supports: you will raise it later, if lighting allows it.

ISO
Start with the maximum ISO value that, in your experience, still allows photos to be free from excessive digital noise. You know your camera, you know the tools you will use to clean your pics and what results you can expect from digital darkroom editing: use your knowledge to decide how much you can ask your sensor. I usually set my camera to ISO 1000. Sometimes, the first shots I take reveal that I can relax a bit and set it to 800. More often, depending on how low the level of lightning results to be, I "know" that ISO 1000, or even 1600 will be needed. I very seldom use ISO 3200, though: in my opinion a slightly underexposed image will look better than a brighter, but significantly more noisy one.

Now, you can relay upon your camera's light metering system to set the shutter time. It is obvious that you will not take all the shots with the same settings: you will adjust the shutter as needed during the show, along with aperture and ISO, if lighting conditions change. Keep in mind that a super-fast shutter is not needed to take steady and interesting shots. 1/100sec, or sometimes even 1/80sec, will allow you to "freeze" a drummer in action, maybe with their sticks a bit blurred. If your lens is stabilized, you can take beautiful portraits of a singer even at 1/50sec. If you can put your elbows upon something steady, and your stabilizer is quite good, your images can be neat even at 1/15sec and with considerable focal lengths (200mm and above... but only if the subject is not moving).

Note that you will be working almost in the same way you would, if you set the camera for "shutter priority". There is an important difference, though: in manual mode, you keep full control over aperture too. Since we assumed that the iris will probably have to be wide open, in "shutter priority mode" the camera could change the aperture setting if lighting becomes brighter. On one hand, it will help you avoiding overexposure but, on the other hand, the depth of field of the image will increase, which can be a good or bad side effect, depending on your goals and preferences.

What if the light meter tells you that you are overexposing? Well, you are lucky. You can raise the shutter speed or close the iris a bit, or lower the ISO. Things become harder when you are underexposing, which unfortunately happens most of the times. Since you already set the f/number to the minimum, the only option is to raise the ISO, but this will have some impact on quality. The good news is that some underexposure does not necessarily compromise the result: in most cases you'll be able to restore a good amount of detail through some careful post processing, even if the image is underexposed, say, by one stop.

By the way, my advice is: always expose for light. When you check exposure before shooting, point the camera to the brightest parts of the subject, and ignore what lies around. If spotlights are in the field, they will be overexposed; backgrounds will turn out underexposed: however, in most cases, this will not be a problem. A black background draws the attention on the subject, for example. And, in case, remember that, at least if you shoot in raw mode, a digital darkroom can merge different exposures, derived from a single shot, to restore overexposed and underexposed spots.

Your camera is ready, and you should be too. In the third part of the news I will give you some suggestions about how to get the best shots. I'd like to close this article with a new set of live shots from fellow deviants.