If you
don't have a pressing need for photos, my advice is to enjoy the concert
instead of trying to taking photos or trying to shoot videos. Shooting
in a concert a tough battle for most people. Your enemies are too powerful
LOL
First, shooting in concert is always a challenge. Fast moving
objects and flashy light.
Most fixed lens cameras have tiny sensors which will fail to capture
sufficient light to capture clear images.
Many times we have seats far back so the camera will get even
less light than someone in the front seats.
Sometime we think a 36x optical zoom would be useful but if you
zoom in, the shutter will be even slower and because of zoom, any
small shake in your hand will be magnified.
So why not enjoy the concert and if needed, take a photo or two with
your phone. This is from my experience 6 years back trying to shoot
a fireworks. No success but wasted an opportunity I had in front of
me in the form of a great fireworks. Since than, I have never brougth
a camera with me on 4th of July fireworks. If I feel a strong desire
to see fireworks photos, I visit flickr.com and enjoy professionally
taken awesome photos.
SLR cameras or
Cameras with larger sensor:
Even most SLRs have tough time shooting in concerts. Said that there
are few alternatives. If you can buy a Full Frame advanced Nikon or
Canon camera that costs $2000 or more, and can buy some expensive
lens, you will have better odds for good photos. Now with such big
professional cameras, you are more likely to be stopped at the gate
and told to leave the camera behind because most concerts don't allow
shooting with professional gear.
Now here is a one cheap alternative that I have recently started
using.
I am going to recommend you a camera provided you like its style.
However the style is not that bad and as such it can work to your
advantage. Most concerts don't allow Professional cameras but
this 'weird looking' camera can often be looked on as some toy
or some old camera. It will have better odds of being allowed
in. (There is another benefit with its boxy style. When I have
T3i in my hand, my subjects become too serious seeing an SLR but
with my boxy camera, I am able to take more candid shots.)
I am talking about Pentax K-01. I have not seen any sub-$1000
camera do as good job in low light or with ISO as high as 3200
as Pentax K-01. It is currently selling for only $360 on Amazon.
This camera used to be around $900 but Pentax's gamble with styling
backfired and now they are clearing them out. This is a monster
when it comes to image quality and low light shooting.
The kit lens on K-01 itself is worth $200.The other benefit
is that with Pentax, you can easily use old cheap lenses like
Super Takumar 135mm F2.5 which works awesome in concerts and games.
It is a manual lens but unlike Nikon or Canon, Pentax K-01 offers
AutoZoom with manual focus and Focus-peaking which comes pretty
handy with manual focusing.
On a cloudy day, I was shooting with K-01 and a 30 year old
Super Takumar F1.4 lens and my friend was shooting with his Nikon,
we compared photos from both cameras. Within a week, my friend
bought K-01 and is now looking for Takumar lenses too. Here is
a photo of her daughter with this $450 combo of Pentax and Takumar:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12298420@N0.
For video taping, Pentax does a nice job too. 1080p. Search
on YouTube for Takumar 50mm and you will see that many serious
minded SLR owners buy Takumar to take professional grade videos.
I will post links to some videos I have taken with this combination