I had a gig shooting my friends blues band in a sports bar in Oceanside. It was a dark corner without a stage and without any existing lighting. This was much different than any concert shooting I had done before, where stage crews set up expensive lights for the band that I can piggyback off of. This was a show with no existing light whatsoever. I had full freedom to use off-camera speedlights if I could find places to put them that didn’t get in the way. I placed a couple strategically and tried using RF-transmitters. (Calumet Litelinks) Big problem! The flashes fired very reliably, but I was unable to focus on anything in the darkness! Shooting active musicians is a focusing challenge in the best of times. This shaped up to be a disaster.

But, I had an idea: I switched to the Canon IR transmitter (ST-E2). Since it was indoors, this worked fairly reliably as well, plus had the huge — HUGE — bonus of having an auto-focus assist beam, which the Canon 5D lacks on its own. As I discovered, this is actually a very big deal. I had a little problem getting the AF-assist beam going, even after I enabled it in the camera settings. I resorted to erasing all camera settings to factory default, and then it worked. That was annoying.

Near the end of the night, I noticed the bass-player had moved off to the side near an alcove with a great backlight. I went over to him and exposed for the backlight, then placed a speedlight to add some fill on him. I chimped it three or four times to get the proper power on the fill, but on the very last shot, he looked up at me and smiled. I nailed one excellent shot. Seconds later, the whole show was over.

Three Lessons Learned for Lighting a Live Music Setup:

One: If you have the opportunity to set a backlight to color the back wall, you damn well should do it. I didn’t think of this until it was too late.

Two: In hindsight I was very intrusive setting up lights. Getting in the band’s face and doing a lot of flashing for shots that weren’t worth it. Had this been a more popular concert, I would have been a very unpopular guy. Since nobody was there, I was OK. I would be more selective if doing this again.

Three: If it’s too dark to focus, hope that IR triggers can work so you can leverage auto-focus on the ST-E2.

This was good experience for me and I’m sure these lessons will serve me well in the future.

Play this now: “Blinded By The Light” – Manfred Mann