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Define “good”? Low key there’s a trend for folks using old school digital point and shoots for a digital retro lo fi vibe. Just go for it!
The biggest limitation is often the slow lens coupled with no option for a hot shoe flash. Smartphones will often do better because of their ability to process the crap out of the weak signals they receive.
Shooting a band on a well-lit stage will yield better results than pictures of the crowd, tho you may need to go manual on the exposure settings (or at least use spot metering) to get consistent results.
Try it and see. Worst case you won’t get any usable pictures, hopefully you’ll get a few. I suggest converting any good ones to black and white and I bet no one will be the wiser.
It won’t cost you anything, so give it go
What’s your definition of “budget camera”? I own this one, and I’ve gotten some good low-light shots with it. It costs around $800, depending on where you go for it.
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dc-fz1000-ii-review
It’s gonna be hard getting somewhat decent shots with that camera to be honest. It isn’t really made for that type of photography either. You’ll be struggling really hard in low light situations.
In the future, you’ll want to look at a camera that doesn’t have a fixed lens like the Nikon P-series. What made you buy this one? Preferably, at some point in time, you’ll want a full-frame camera (with interchangeable lenses) and a lens with a wide aperture if you want to get into nightlife/concert photography.
For now, you can always have a try with your current camera but it’ll be hard getting a good shots I suppose, unless the subject(s) are very well lit and you are able to freely move around the venue.
I actually bought this one because, where I live, tech products (cameras, gpus, smartphones) are VERY expensive, so it’s really hard to find good products that are cheap, if you convert the minimal wage to dollars you get around $260. But yes, in the future I plan on getting a better one, in the meantime I’m gonna see what I can do, thanks!!!
Budget camera? Yes. But if it’s the right budget camera.
Your camera is not ideal. it’s optimized to be able to zoom in a ton but it isn’t good in low light.
So no, it’s not going to be as good as a high end camera, but you can try somethings, and you an definitely use it to learn and improve your skills. Here’s some advice:
- If you haven’t already learn about manual exposure (look up videos on the exposure triangle and figure out the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO). You need to drill this as you will need to override things on the camera.
- DO NOT stand in the back and zoom in. The closer you can get, the better off you are, the more you zoom in, the less light you’ll have to work with. Someone taught me early on “If your images suck: you’re not close enough.”
- Understand that most stages or shows will have very very dark backgrounds. This often tricks the camera into thinking it needs to make the image brighter than it needs to be. This makes the lead singer’s face blown out and it means it made choices that caused the image to be more blurry to get more light. This is why you want to use manual exposure and adjust it so the lead singer’s face looks good even if the background goes very dark (which can be fine as it can make the scene more moody)
- If you have to set the ISO higher than you like and they come out noisy, try converting them to B&W… that can help you quite a bit. Also do some tests with the camera. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can shoot RAW, but see if there are noise reduction settings. If you feel things get too “smeared” at high ISO, you can see if there are “noise reduction” settings you can reduce or turn off. Sometimes a bit of noise in B&W looks better than a smeared photo from too much noise reduction.
the more you zoom in, the less light you’ll have to work with
It should be noted that this only applies to lenses with variable aperture number, such as the one in P520.
For fixed f-number lenses the amount of light is independent of zoom amount (as the physical aperture opening scales with focal length).
I was writing specific to OP’s camera, and to a lesser extend the broader category of “budget cameras” which are more likely to have variable max aperture lenses.
However even with constant aperture lenses, at longer focal lengths you may need to increase shutter to compensate for shake to the point you lose light (subjects are moving so you will need some bit of a fast shutter, but if you are going to push limits and try to time 1/45th or 1/60th second exposures when the lead singer is in a pose, doing it at 200+mm can be more problematic. A constant f/4 lens this is much less of an issue than OP’s f/3-5.9 lens, but shutter speed still factors a little. Additionally composition and perspective may be improved by getting closer.
that’s really useful, thanks!!
Short answer is yes but probably not with that. The trouble with “cheaper” cameras is that their ability to articulate and image in darker conditions is lower. This has to mainly do with the technology necessary to record pixels, and guess the missing ones with a computer inside.
If you want to shoot your friends’ gigs I think your best bet might honestly be to either lean real hard into slow exposure or lo-fi stylized photos or find a way to add light either through flash or having adding lights to your friends’ stage setups. It’s an odd thing about music photography that the places you’re most likely to begin photographing in also typically force you to work with the most challenging lighting conditions, but since you know the band you have a little bit of an opportunity there to find ways of adding light
Bar lighting is absolutely terrible. I think you’ll struggle without an external flash.
Is it possible to get some good photos? Probably. But you’ll be heavily restricted by your environment. And fast-moving subjects might be off the table entirely, unless the venue has really good stage lights (Here… A rarity)
An iPhone pro is plenty for a casual/amateur shoot these days. There are even external flashes and strobes that can work with iPhones.
Assuming you aren’t getting paid for it, youdon’t need fancy equipment unless you 1. Need a very specific lens and sensor configuration for a specific style/application. 2. Robust sensor / raw image for super low light noise suppression or heavy post-processing 3. Shoot craptons in a very short period.
Especially for events and candid shoots since more and more people who aren’t professional models haven’t lived around big black cameras and get intimidated by them.