Tips for shooting punk / hardcore shows.

[vodkablast]

Hey everyone, let me get my gear out of the way first:
30d
Canon 28-135 IS USM
Canon 50mm 1.8 II
Nissin Di622 Flash

Yesterday I took my first real shot at shooting a band. I read all the pointers about doing so and before hand derided to go ahead and get the 50mm lens in hope that the wide aperture would help me out. I shot everything in RAW and at ISO 1600. I decided to keep the camera on aperture priority mode at 1.8 to utilize the lens and take out some of the guess work. The only problem is that the bands I was shooting were all high energy punk bands. I shot about 800 pictures and only a handful of them turned out to be a little bit acceptable. Shooting at 1.8 was great and I was able to get some shutter speeds around 1/60th but because the bands were so high energy they were constantly drifting out of the focal range. This, paired with static gelled lights didn't help. Any tips for shooting these types of bands would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

edit: I heard someone say the 30d can shoot at a 3200 ISO but (I guess) because I was in priority mode it would only let me go to 1600, would this have helped?

[René Damkot]

It would have gained you a stop... So a shutterspeed of 1/125s or f/2.5 instead of f/1.8

Then again, it sounds like lighting was a challenge ;)

Not entirely sure, but I'm guessing the ISO 3200 can only be set if you enable it in a menue ("ISO expansion" or some such). Your manual will tell you.

[skifurthur]

On the 30D shot in manual mode. You can then set the apeture at whatever setting you want, set the ISO at H (3200) and then change the shutter speed as needed. I only shoot Manual these days so I'm not sure you can do it any other way but that way works.