Lots of good advice here.

Change to manual focus and set the focus to infinity. This will eliminate the autofocus delay. Do not use flash. If you have a choice between full program mode, manual aperture, and manual time, choose manual time and set it to the shortest time that your maximum aperture will allow with the given lighting. Crop the photos to be tight in on the subject of interest (for example, the Ben and Michelle photo should be a portrait mode crop of the center 1/3 of the frame). Use the Rule of Thirds.

This is going to be a challenging situation. After looking at your sample pics, setting focus to infinity will have them out of focus. You're close enough to the subjects that infinity is going to be a bad idea. I don't know your camera, but it probably doesn't even have manual focus anyway.

One trick to speed it up is to press the shutter button half-way down before you shoot, which will focus and compute shutter settings. Then when you see the shot you want, press it the rest of the way. It should take the picture almost immediately.

Finally, in low light, you want to increase your ISO setting as much as you can tolerate. I'm guessing your camera can do ISO 50 up to ISO 400. In low light, turn it up to 200 or 400. This is basically amplifying the signal that your image sensor sees, which means the shutter speed can be faster and still get the same brightness, so you'll get less motion blur. The trade-off is that your pictures will be visibly noisier.

If you want to try the scene settings, probably "indoor" is your best bet. Night is going to favor long exposures, which is great for things that don't move, but not so great for a concert.

Finally, your pictures aren't bad! It looks like you're using the flash, which basically gets rid of most of the problems with shooting indoors, but creates new problems of its own. That is, overly bright foreground, dark background, possibly washed out colors, and a strange level of contrast. If you feel like experimenting with my tips above, also try disabling the flash and see if you like what you get. I think you may be up against the limitations of your camera, however, so using the flash may be your best bet.

Great info guys, thanks! I know next to nothing about cameras but I'm getting there.

I do have manual focus, and ISO 50-400 is correct, knave.

My plan is to show up before the band I really want to see is on and practice on the opening bands, using your tips and the various automatic modes on the camera, and try to tell on the little screen which ones are working best. I at least have learned what all the different modes are supposed to do, and how to adjust the various settings. Crash course - I'm leaving in like 25 minutes.

I take a lot of concert photos and have a Canon Powershot G2. My camera also has that delay. However, you can 'get around' it by "half-pressing" the button and holding it till you're ready to shoot. The half-press is when the camera does its calculating. However, you should realize that as you move the camera after it's done calculating, you'll screw up the shot as the settings may not be appropriate for the new angle.

One thing I do is pay very close attention to the action. Then, if I know the song, I can predict what the person will do based on how they behave when a similar note was hit/struck in the past. For instance, if I notice a guitarist/bassist likes to jump in the air on a certain beat, I'll half press where s/he's been jumping and hold there till the next jump and then snap my picture. (Here's another "action" one but you can see I fucked up the framing. Generally these kind of shots are done blind--I don't actually try and witness the action through the camera. I frame it, know the framing and then shift my body ever so slightly with the action, following it, and finishing the press when the time seem right--I'm sure to a spectator it looks like I'm filming video.)

I am not a great photographer by any means, but for some reason, I'm a reasonably competant concert photographer (my pics have appeared in magazines, books, and on many band sites. One almost made the booklet in a box set--unfortunately I couldn't find the original before Matador sent it to press.)

My main skills/advice isn't really camera related and can be summed up as:

1. Get there VERY early to get right against the stage (I don't like using a zoom).

2. Know my camera very well (even though I don't know what a lot of the stuff means or really does, I am aware of what affect a setting will have, if that makes any sense). For instance, I know that B&W and color handle the light differently and if it's a bright stage, I'll shoot more B&W as color looks very flat (to me) when there's too much light. (This one of your shots is what I mean by flat and is also a good example of not getting there early as you're shooting over people's heads.)

3. I have a swivel screen on my camera that will go 270 degrees around. It's a god send and allows me to take pictures like this(I'm not on stage with her though it looks, from my angle, like I am) and this (I'm holding the camera above my head at arm's length so I'm straight on with his face) and this (the camera is sitting on the stage and I'm looking down at it, into the flip screen).

4. I take a LOT of pictures at a show (sometimes two full battery charges worth). Over 11 thousand photos in 3 years, actually, all at concerts. This is another thing about getting up against the stage; I'm bothering less people with my camera. Taking so many pictures means you have a better chance of getting a good shot, percentage-wise. Make sure your battery is charged as much of the good stuff happens at the end of the set.

5. I also make a point of telling the people next to me (prior to the show starting) to please let me know if I'm bothering them and that I'll stop. No one ever has, but several people have gone out of their way to accomodate me by allowing me to shift to their space when it is beneficial.

More of my pix here.

Those photos are great, dobbs!

dobbs, see now THAT is what I'm talking about. I love your pictures. (Though, actually, I couldn't have been closer to the stage - I was leaning on it. That was just a bad shot on my part to get that guy's head. I admittedly was paying way more attention to the show than my pictures.)

I also have a swivel screen and was aware of the half-press thing, but again, forget to use them in practice. This discussion should get those things in my head.

Second the half press thing. And yeah, now that I've seen that they're small-venue shots, I take back what I said about infinity.

Okay, I'm leaving now. Thanks everyone - I'll experiment tonight. I'll post a link to the results in this thread so you can all grade my performance. :)

Thanks, mike9322 and occhublu.

Something else I forgot to mention: use the strap of your camera. Most of the time I literaly tie the camera to my hand arm so there's no risk of dropping and I can reach wherever. When you need to take a shot with low light but no flash, wrap the strap around your neck and pull it taught so that you're using your body as a tripod, so to speak.