technique - Tips for Shooting Crowds, Political Demonstrations, Rallies and other 'Lively' Events

Over the next few months I'm going to be spending weekend time documenting a number of demos and rallies here in the UK. The events are to be held outdoors, during the day and may become confrontational (a number of often-violent/aggressive right-wing groups are likely to attend). There are likely to be many thousands of people attending.

When I've snapped this sort of thing in the past, I used my trusty Olympus C50 compact, but I upgraded to a Nikon D5000 + stock 18-55mm lens kit last year so this is what I'll be taking with me.

What I'm looking for is tips (equipment, technique, composition, general survival tips) from those of you with experience of shooting under less-than-placid conditions. I don't, for example know whether I should take my tripod, whether I should keep the camera in a case or just wear it all day, whether I should take a fixed lens with me, what I'll do if my battery runs out during a day's shooting etc. etc.

Can anyone advise me?

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Just a couple more examples of areas I'm ignorant of:

• Is there any legal stuff I need to think about when shooting members of the public, Police officers and so on?


• Do the authorities have the authority to confiscate my equipment?

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Great answers, many thanks to you all, have accepted an answer at random as they were all good and I couldn't decide.

I had a trial run on Saturday's national demonstration against the cuts to the UK's public services.

Answer

Here are some easy tips from my experiences as a parade and convention photography and what I learned from a conference on war-time journalism.

1. Get more batteries


2. Get more memory cards, many medium sized ones are better than one large one


3. Get a faster lens


4. Get an outer garment that identifies you front and back as a photographer


5. Take just the camera body, one lens, memory cards, batteries, and a cleaning cloth for the lens


6. Do not let go of the camera unless you are falling


7. Along with a firm grip, keep the camera strap around your neck when the crowd gets rambunctious


8. Do not interact with the crowd but make eye contact with authorities and do what they say immediately, but do not stop shooting


9. Do not take a tripod or monopod, the movement of the crowd makes it dangerous and the sutterspeed will negate the usefulness of one



10. Keep shutterspeeds above 1/100 and try for 1/250 or higher


11. Shoot at between f/2.8 and f/8 concentrating on f/8 to get the action in focus only use 2.8 when you have time to compose and really think about the image


12. Keep moving, following other photographers around a little is cool, but your images will be more unique when you are on your own