Photographing rock bands

I am off to see a mate performinh in his band and wondered if there were any techniques for shooting, ie, do I use the camera's on board flash? is it powerful enough, will it remove the colour of the stage lights or do I shoot without flash?
Any tips appreciated

Flash is a no no. Got to be fast glass and high ISO. There are no shortcuts unfortunately. If the lighting is very bright, all the better. Blurring can be an issue.

Some people manage the odd shot but to do a whole sequence is not easy. Distance from the stage is a killer.
After you have sorted all that, it's easy!!!

Regards

Hi,
I was shooting some bands a couple of weeks ago using my K7 but at the same gig a year ago i was using my K10 which is probably closer to your K100D. With the K10D i used 400 iso and an aperture of F4 for most of the shots as i wanted to avoid shooting at full aperture. The best time to press the shutter is when the subject movement is at the peak of the action so as to minimise subject blur, Once you have established your best exposure setting don`t bother to alter it with the stage lighting changing so fast you will still get good interesting shots. As long as the lights are`nt pointing directly at the Camera just keep snapping and you will be surprised at the results!
As for Flash, If there is no smoke then a little fill in won`t hurt if you fancy trying out the effect on a couple of shots, But should there be even a small amount of smoke then the flash will just bounce off it and give you washed out images. Too much flash will kill the atmosphere of the lighting effect so use it sparingly if at all.

Another useful tip is to think about taking some shots with the camera tilted at 45 degrees, It can give some striking compositions if you get it right.
This year i was lucky enough to be able use my Monopod and with my K7 at 800 iso i could manage 1/200th sec at F4 and shoot Video too!

Regards - Pete.

I agree with the above.

Flash tends to kill the stage lighting effects, so just up the ISO to give you the speed you want at the aperture you want.

As its your mates band can he get you front of stage (i.e. between the audience and the stage)? If you can get there then you will avoid using long lenses which will knock down the max aperture meaning higher ISO for same shutter speed.

Take lots as some will suffer from blur or be over/under exposed when stage lighting changes.

If using manual then keep looking at screen to ensure your exposure continues to be correct as stage lighting may get darker/lighter with time ar for individual songs.

It can be good to take pictures of the audience too - at a recent band shoot they had very bright halogen flood lights pointing forward from the back of the stage (about 20 of them) every so often these would flash like giant flash guns. Absoultly useless to shoot the band while they were flashing but I turned around and used them as camera flash to illuminate the audience - a bit hit and miss but gave me audience shots which would otherwise not have been possible.