[SHERBERT.]

I am taking a few photos for a band at Camden Barfly on Sunday.

But i haven't really ever done anything like this before,

I'm not charging yet, i figured i get rep', photos for my portfolio and a free entry pass and they get photos for their site.

What advise can anyone give me for taking professional looking photos on my Cannon EOS 400D?

I'm desperate to make a good impression.

[M1ke A]

ISO 400 at the minimum. I'd also try 800 and 1600 to see what the noise levels are like.

I generally shoot on manual and raw. 1/60th is generally fast enough to freeze motion but you'll find 1/5th is the the sort of speed you need to get decent light levels.

What lenses have you got? A 50mm f1.8 is a good option as they're cheap and fast. You wouldn't really need to go down beyond f4 with this lens.

Where possible I would say don't use flash. However this is unfortunately very tricky as small venues have carp light rigs and what is OK to the human eye is rubbish on 'film'. Oh and bands love red lighting for some strange reason and this is horrible to shoot in. A good trick here is convert these shots to mono

Now having said that, the vast bulk of my shots have been flashed. I usually dial down the flash output 2 or 3 stops. A gig friend does the same with his 350 so I'm presuming you can also adjust the 400's inbuilt flash output?

Oh when you say a 'few' make sure you take at least 200. You won't have many keepers.......