Hi!
I'm not unexperienced at concert photography but I'm still having difficulties sometimes with the proper exposure and white balance/color in Lightroom.
This weekend I was done with a show and sat in a bright lighted office editing my photographs, when I saw the photos I few days later I realised I made them to bright in Lightroom. Ofcourse I know the cause, the room was too bright so I overexposed my images.
These days color is also a challenge, every phone and almost every laptop has night modes with screens that get more yellow'ish
There are a lot of factors, ambient light & screen brightness for example, but also night time or day time.
I'm looking for some kind of check I can add to my workflow, unfortunately histograms do not always work in concert photography in my humble opinion. My question is, how do you guys deal with this?
Histograms a re nonsense as it relates to concert photography, or anything else where the subject is lit so radically different from the rest of the image. You're clearly doing it correctly, pick the part of the image that matters most to you, and expose for that. Sometimes when light is changing so radically the only way to do that is to chimp it or just know the particular venue/lighting setup perfectly.
Color balance can be personal taste imo at a concert. Is it correct when the colors are correct? Or is it correct to take it to what everyone present experienced?
As to brightening images after the fact? No real answer except to make it perfect using a Spyder or similar and then hoping that the variations from that on the consumer end are minimal. And it seems that you have access for more than the standard 2-3 songs...so I would suggest exposing it perfectly in camera and then just sticking with it. I suppose tonal adjustments might still come later.