Blown-out Highligts in Stage Lighting

[RuneL]

Time it, so you only get light where you want it, bring a long lens, so you can isolate your subjects from the blow out areas, it's possible and in my experience makes for more interesting photos.

[scrappydog]

A stage photographer told me that you need to expose down 2.5-3.5 stops due to the specular highlights caused by the performance lighting.

[thomasl4]

Purple is probably the worst color for a digital sensor to reproduce. There isn't much you can do about that. Photoshopping  a rorschach image on the drummer's face might help though. hehe

[jayvo86]

I don't know if anyone recommended it, but I'd open up to 2.8 and drop your ISO to 1600 or 1250 to give yourself more DR. Be careful with underexposing too much. The shadows can get a little nasty on the 5D line.

[Chris_prophotographic]

I think its the spectrum, like EVIL reds this Purple has red in it and seems our canon sensors are not  friendly with it.  I seen this only occurring on my old rebel, but drummers are EVIL and this is accurate.

if you can stop down a bit while shooting and or framing choice(i know not a technical solution, but some times you don't need to shoot into the sun)

High contrast is nice anyway black framing of a stage lit person is always nicer than seeing every detail

[bchernicoff]

I've seen good advice about what to try in the future, but regarding the photos you've taken...if you drop the exposure all the way on the RAW file is it possible to get the faces to look decent? If so, you might try double RAW processing the image in PhotoShop.

http://gavtrain.blogspot.com/2011/02/raw-double-process-hdr-effect.html

[tron]

Underexpose and try to recover whats left.

I hope you do not suggest anything from the dark side... 

Simplest basic strategy -- short of bringing a pellet guns and shooting out the offending lights!

Interesting and cheap (for the photographer only) way to fix it