I recently tried to photograph a live band with my Nikon d3100.
My lens is currently 18-55mm.
Could any better equipment help with the problem? .
Your equipment is unlikely to be 'the' problem. - There's likely more than a single problem to start with. But, Live Performances are a tricky subject to tackle;
It's an action subject, you cant ask a performer to stop mid song and just hold that pose a second, please!
Access can be restrictive, and you have to work around the audience... well... depends how bad the band is I suppose, but still...
Venue is usually in doors, meaning generally low ambient light levels and artificial lighting, giving colour casts, before they start chucking in harsh contrasty stage lighting shifting about and changing moment to moment .
Flash is a contentious subject - it can be distracting to both the performers and the audience.. as can auto-focus assistance lamp, possibly more so FWIW.
BUT, you can get pretty decent shots with even the most rudimentary of cameras...
That was taken at a pub-gig with my 'Franken-Camera'.. originally a pair of old Kodak compacts my Kids had for Christmas almost a decade back, I cannibalised to try and make one working camera from, after they both broke them! 5.1 MPix and 3x zoom, almost utterly automatic and with a highest ISO sensitivity of ISO400, it was FAR from a great bit of photo kit before the kids knackered them, BUT, if you apply a bit of technique to work with what you got, and a bit of 'serendipity' hoping for the best, you can get half decent shots, even with such limited equipment. What YOU have by comparison aught to be shear luxury!
Here's another one, from my uni-days almost thirty years ago. Taken with a very cheap (even then!) Olympus OM10 and even cheaper Vivitar 35-70 lens, on cheap Croatian Black & White film, rated at 400ASA, and push processed a couple of stops to 1600ASA...
400ASA was considered 'fast' film, back then, and about as fast as you could get easily, and certainly cheaply... I think I bought a couple of rolls of Fuji 3200 a few years later, but would have been wasted in the OM10, who's meter would only let me set up to ASA1600 anyway! But, that 'cheap' eastern-European emulsion was pretty diabolical, even if processed at the box speed; over cooked in development to compensate for deliberate gross under-exposure, resulted in 'golf ball' like grain, and the incredibly high 'contrast' lacking hardly any graduation of tone between pure black and pure white.... but helped me get a picture, and in them days we just called it 'adding to the ambience'..
BUT, point is, you have a bludy good camera, and with a little bit of know how, and a lot of practice, there's little reason you should't get some damn good pictures with it, even of such an awkward and more demanding subject.
To offer more specific 'help', we need to better understand how you are currently using it though, and what your expectations are.
For starters, your expectations are likely to be too high. For this sort of subject, and more so as a beginner, you have GOT to accept a high proportion of shots will be duffers. From a 40 minute 'set', I might take 100 or more photo's, and maybe get 20 or so that are half presentable, and if I am LUCKY, one or perhaps two, that are half way 'decent', let alone 'stunning'! (One of the reasons I shot such cheap chitty film back in the day! 'Machine-Gunning was an expensive business when every frame cost!)
Next..the big villain is the low light, and being able to keep your shutter-speed high enough to avoid blur.. while avoiding 'flash', either to maintain the ambient lighting balance, or to avoid intruding on the show.
Many ways to combat blur, but start with the basics, modulating your breathing, and holding the camera properly. Then, pick your camera angles.. how are the performer's moving, how much, and in what direction? Are you shooting wide or tight? If you shoot tight any movement the performer makes will blur across ore of the frame... so shoot wider, and pick the angle they move least in.. and pick your moment, wait for the 'lulls' and 'changes' when they pause and stop bopping as much and you get least motion to blur!
EXPOSURE... what do you know of the topic? Inherent flaw with automatic exposure cameras, no matter how 'smart' their metering system is, is that they all 'assume' that the scene you are looking at is an 'average' brightness, around 18% grey.. that is about the brightness of a concrete paving slab in good day-light... it is obviously NOT the brightness of a dingy biker pub, as first shot or even dingier Student Union hall, as the second! BUT, cameras inbuilt meter, will assume that's how bright the scene SHOULD be, and so will try and make settings for you to 'over expose' your picture to brighten it up to that level.. in this case, and many many others, YOU probably know how bright the scene is better than the camera, and YOU are better able to judge what would be more 'helpful' settings..
Scene is dim, you want the photo to be a bit dim, to show the scene how it looked... so, IF you ignore or over-ride the camera's suggested 'exposure', you can probably drop your settings, one, two, three, maybe even four 'stops', and get something closer to what you see than the camera is trying to give you.... that is the difference between being able to use a shutter speed of 1/60s that will freeze motion pretty well, and letting the camera drop the shutter down to perhaps 1/4s that will almost certainly deliver 'blurr'.
Mentioned using 'fast film' in days of yore, and push processing. Your D3100, he says checking on the O/H's in the corner... goes up to ISO3200 in 'native' sensitivity, with Hi1 & Hi2 offering to boost that to the equivalent of ISO12800. The 'boosted' Hi settings, are analogous to 'push-processing' deliberately under-exposed film to boost the brightness, but 'in-camera' with no messy chemicals to mix! But, we could also boost a under exposed image a it more in them days, after developing the negative, when we made a print.. and that is still possible and even easier in digital, brighten the image in 'post-process' in light-room or photo-shop of whatever.... its down and dirty, and introduces 'flaws' as it did with film, when it made pictures grainy and high contrast, only graininess is more speckly and called 'noise'... OR if you prefer 'ambience'...
Just for fun... another one from the Franken-Camera back at the dingy biker's pub...
I mention the fact its a biker's pub, it IS significant. First, because a cumbersome DSLR isn't exactly the most 'pocket-able' picture making device to lug about for an impromptu 'grab-shot' when you go to a biker's pub, on a motorbike! Hence the Franken-Camera! Also, on this particular occasion it was the Land-Lords birthday.. I'm not sure that something had worked loose in the Franken-Cameras focus mechanism, B-U-T that night EVERYTHING was blurry! And hyper-active singer and bassist, well, GREAT NIGHT, but BIT of a lost cause for photo's!
Don't want to over-load the post with examples, (of my pretty mediocre images!) But, with an AWFUL lot of duffers from that set; decided to play with effects in post-process. I actually used a grain effect filter to artificially add 'grain' to most of them, which masks a lot of less nice 'noise' and on this one, decided to go for a flattened colour, high contrast, almost posterised 'effect' mimicking the sort of low quality album sleeve 'inset' illustration of early '80's Indy records.. which sort of suited the subject and the mood... you cant polish a turd they say, and this is probably a case in point... BUT I don't care! I got the effect I was looking for, maybe not the photo I would have liked 'clean in camera', BUT? You can still have fun, even with your mistakes, and you don't HAVE to do it ALL 'clean in camera'. Point is, DON'T be afraid of using Post-Process, its JUST another tool, there to be used. (as Kodiak admits needing to make the best of the examples he offered) its valid, its useful, USE it...have some fun with it, see what you can do with it.
Want to mention focus, while on the topic of basics. Nod mentioned a 'fast' 50mm f1.8 lens as a good choice for this sort of work...I'm not so sure on that. Main attraction of that lens is the 'fast' f1.8 aperture, that lets more light into the camera. The Kit 18-55 you have is a not unrespectable f3.5 at the short 18mm end, and f5.6 at the long, 55mm end. This change maximum aperture as you zoom in is worth noting, and if you want a faster lens, well, you already have one, if you zoom out and shoot wide! f1.8 is also only stop and a half 'faster' than the f3.5 you already have. That's not an awful lot. If you are down to blur inducing 1/4 second shutter speeds, that is only going to lift you to 1/8 or 1/10th and not get yo up into crisp freezing shutter speeds above 1/30th. Sure, a 50mm prime would get you in almost as 'tight' as using your kit zoom at the 55mm end where its a much slower f5.6, so if you were down to 1/4 there, being able to open up to f1.8 would get the shutter up to maybe 1/15th, but its still slow, and you could get as tight on subject shooing wide at 18 and then cropping in post-process.. and you could get the shutter speed up as high, or higher, at slower apertures, with a bit of in camera or post process exposure compensation, or pushing the ISO setting up into the Hi modes...
Worth mentioning on that particular topic, in 'Auto' exposure mode, your camera wont set those 'Hi' ISO settings as far as I can tell. It will go to the highest native ISO 3200, and then try dropping the shutter speed further. The 'Hi' ISO boost settings only seem to be available, in the M, A or S semi-auto modes, when set manually, or in the P mode when, inthe menu's, you can set either as the highest ISO setting as well as select lowest desired shutter speed... so, again, if you are shooting auto, learning to use the M,A,S & P settings and getting accessing the ISO Hi boosts would do as much for you as a new 'fast' lens, without spending a penny.
BACK in focus!.. Main attraction of the 'fast' primes, either the 35mm F1.8 or 50mm f1.8 isn't so much the extra light the fast aperture lets in in low light. (does make the scene brighter i the viewfinder, but that's another issue) The attraction is the incredibly shallow depth of focus you can get around your subject with such a wide aperture. Its great for blurring out back-grounds and drawing the viewers attention on the subject you have focused on.... but at such extreme wide apertures, the Depth of Focus can be EXTREMELY shallow, and you find your pictures get very 'soft' as the Depth of Focus doesn't actually get all your subject IN focus! You focus on some-ones eyes, and their nose and ears go out of focus! Consequently focusing becomes that much more critical, as you have so little tolerance around the point you focus on... and this brings me back to the niggle I wanted to deal with of Gig photography.
Your camera is Auto-Focus, and for all modern Auto-Focus systems are supposed to be superb.. I personally am not totally convinced of it, but still, they DON'T work too well in the dark! Which is why they have an AF 'assist' lamp... which at a Gig you have probably turned off! Which wont make them any better! AND on stage you have a 'confusion' of moving subjects and moving lights, that can easily 'fool' a 'stupid' auto-focus system that hasn't got a clue what it is looking at or supposed to focus on even if it can see anything!
You mentioned you struggled with 'blurry' shots, and we have presumed that they were from shutter speed drop out, BUT could any have been simple out-of-focus? as well as if not instead of? Were you by any chance 'jabbing' the shutter button to try and make it fire, frustration it seemed to be 'not working' because the camera was still trying to find a focus lock, and possibly a exposure lock, under changing light? Two possibly cause of blur there. First the focus error, second the camera motion cased by more violent shutter pressing! Two more simple 'basics' to consider.
Meanwhile, begs suggestion that you might get better results, erring on the conservative side and trying to void the widest aperture settings, and trying to keep over, say f4 or f5.6, to maintain a decent Depth-of-Focus and focus tolerance, for any AF 'errors' or anomalies.Begs finding other ways to keep the shutter speed up, but, far more than one way to skin a cat on that one, as already delved into.
So, to sum up... depending on what you are already dong, or not, what you already know, or don't, there is probably an AWFUL lot of stuff you can do to improve your Gig shots just through simple, basics, know-how and technique, to get more out of your camera as it stands.
I'll offer one last example to show not everything I shoot is utter garbage, this time with same set-up (near enough) you have.
Compare it to the first example I offered... it's a heck of a lot 'better' camera... but pro-rata, its no where ear as much better a photo!
AND, to concur with Kodiak again, and pick up on point he alluded to about the disco lights... SO MUCH is just completely beyond your control this situation, and you cant make it better than you are given! If this photo is much if any better, big chunk of that difference is that it's on a 'professional' stage at a Biker Rally; the stage isn't cluttered with kit stacked wherever it'll fit in the pub! There's a proper back-drop, not a toilet door and a fruit machine! And there's professional lighting, not a simple disco rack plugged into the mixing desk, and it's not competing with the fire exit sig, the toilet sign, another slot-machine of five, the pool table strip-light and the bar lighting!
Bottom line... if you want good really 'Gig' photo's... you just DON'T try taking them at a gig! You ask nicely if you can shoot at a rehearsal, where there's -one else around, and you might ask people to pose or do a bit of 'set up' tidy up the shot, OR you ask incredibly nicely if you can do a dedicated photo' shoot. Mine are 'snap-shots' I make no bones about that. They are what I saw on my nights out, or my holidays, and are 'good enough' for the 'added' bit of fun to that night out or holiday, witch brings us back to that 'expectation' question... what do yo expect? what do you want to achieve? WHY are you taking these photo's? How good do they need to be? How god do you want them to be?
BUT, you have a damn good camera, and right here, right now, and probably for a log time beyond, you probably don't need any more than a bit more basic know-how and technique to get more from it. Offered some suggestion of what know-how ad technique may be useful, but without knowing in more detail what you are ad aren't doing, its significantly guess work as to whether its in any way useful, or pitched to the level you are at.Hope it helps some though.
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Drummer John Lingwood
London Climate Change March - Kate Tempest
