Photography

20+ year concert shooter here. Sometimes you just have to use flash. Shitty dark punk rock venue with some random Home Depot lights? Flash. Esp with punk rock and awesome slow shutter effects. Performance during event with flat lighting with flash allowed in the venue? Flash. Most other gigs? No flash. It’s a tool, horses for courses.

Tbh - way better to know how to use a flash effectively in all occasions and not needing it is better than having no clue/inflexible values (“it’s not true to the ART!!!”) and having to turn in useable shots at the end of the show.

I would strongly suggest not using this photo as too deep an inspiration.

The light trail effect is cool and all but it's also massively overused. By all means figure out how to do it, and if the venue is ok with flash, take a few like that, but if you spend the whole set trying to get light-trail photos and nothing else, it's gonna be pretty lame.

Flash n spin+ longer exposure

Shutter drag.

Single shot, dragged-shutter Second-curtain (rear curtain) sync flash on-camera, rotated on axis.

Set your camera's rear curtain synch so that it fires the flash at the end of the exposure, then set your shutter speed slow like 1/10 or slower (up to a second or two)

Push the shutter release while rotating the camera, and it will fire the flash at the end.

This will combine bright light streaks and a clear picture of your subject.

Get permission from the artist and venue before using a flash. The majority of shows I do not allow flash.

Check the "Shutter Drag" technique

Shutter drag, rear curtain flash sync.

It's called light painting. Go on YouTube and search for it and you will find all that you need

You can do it with a speedlight and lowering your shutter speed to around 1/8-1/15th Find good pin light sources

Definitely go check out r/lightpainting it’s pretty rad shit.

Slow shutter speed + flash

• play around with anywhere from 1/30 to 1/60 shutter speed

• I would go to a higher aperture, maybe 2.8 up to 5.6, but again, play around before the shoot

• You can do it with an in-body flash but a hotshoe flash will give better results

This thread is full of technical answers on curtain sync, and I would generally put those comments on the back burner until you're comfortable with the basics of what's happening here. This image is achievable on any camera that allows manual shutter speed and a flash.

You're slowing the shutter speed to blur the lights and shooting the flash to freeze the initial subject.

Everyone else has given great advice, but I'll add: if you're new at shooting concerts and new at playing with light, I'd aim to get comfortable shooting concerts first before you blow much time/energy on trying to replicate this. Especially if you're limited to 3 songs which is the standard for large shows -- that time goes REAL fast.

Drag shutter: Longer shutter speed with a flash. Move the camera during the exposure.

That's shutter drag, or slash and drag.

f/8-f/11, 1/10th or so Shutter speed, and ISO 200-800

Flash on, take the shot, and then twist the camera. You can zoom in on the zens, rotate the camera, or shake it all to get different effects.

The subject is completely dark and only the lights are exposed so the movement happens with them, and then the flash pops at a high speed and captures the subject.

shutter drag, slow shutter speed with flash, took the pic with the flash then moved the camera while the shutter was open to get the moving lights

It's called "Dragging the shutter." I use flash set to the first curtain, shitter to about 1 sec - take the photo and move the camera.

It’s called light painting. Slow shutter speed while someone moves around with a light. There are a ton of tutorials for that online, too, depending on what exactly you wanna do

It's a combination of very wide-angle lens (therefore deep Depth-of-field), slow shutter, off-camera flash. Also probably high ISO. Focus was most probably set manually with high f/stop. The post with the original image talks about using a fish-eye lens. Definitely not amateur equipment (or skill).

Your problem in photographing in dark venues is knowing how to set your focus, because the camera's autofocus won't have enough light to work correctly. Then you'll need to know how to set the flash power so that it's bright enough to give sufficient light without blowing out the foreground, and that will likely require off-camera flash at a sufficient distance to evenly light the sunject of interest.

Your camera's pop-up flash won't have enough power or distance to do this. Plus this image was not taken with a "normal" lens.

This is a double or triple exposure. They took the picture of the bassist with flash, and then found some lights maybe above the stage, set the shutter to a slow speed maybe like 1/2 or 1 second, no flash, probably turned up the aperture so only the brightest lights are getting in, and then took a picture of the lights while rotating the camera, which overlays on top of the original.

This can also be done in post but often is a lot more annoying to do then rather than just being creative in the moment. Double exposures are super fun, especially for live music. Take note that not every digital camera will give you the option to do this.

Shutter drag. Start your settings with 8/8/8/8 - 1/8th second SS, f/8, ISO 800 and 1/8th flash power. If it’s too bright, reduce the flash. If it’s too dark, increase the iso before anything else because too much/too bright flash gets annoying for the subject of the photo.

Google shutter drag

Dragging shutter, flash w/rear curtain sync.