The Sitch:
Last week, I went to the Rogue Wave concert with my friends, Rob and Julie.  The concert was at the Fine Line Music Cafe, in downtown Minneapolis.  It is a nice intimate venue, and being a short fella, I wanted to show up early so I wouldn’t get stuck standing behind some tall dudes.  We showed up about half an hour early, got some spots right up by the stage, and got to catch the opening acts, JBM and Man/Miracle (both were really good too).

The Gear:
I brought my Olympus E-620 with a 25mm f/2.8 pancake lens (50mm EFL).  I had used it in the past at the Jason Mraz concert, and I knew it would perform okay, and that it would be small enough that it wouldn’t draw too much attention from the people at the door… I obviously wanted something a little faster, but I wasn’t too sure of their camera policy, so I had my friend smuggle in my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens (60mm EFL).  If I had my way, I would have gone with something even wider, but these would have to do.

JBM Performs:

Man/Miracle performs:

Rogue Wave hits the stage:

Lessons learned:
I shot the majority of these photos with the 30mm f/1.4, ISO between 400-800.  The mix of lighting made it challenging, I kept it on Auto WB, because with the constantly changing lighting, it’s hard to dial it in otherwise.  I shot using center weighted spot metering on aperture priority.  When I reviewed my photos, I found the camera had selected some pretty high shutter speeds due to the backlighting.  I think I would have had better results shooting in manual mode, and selecting the shutter speed manually, and potentially adjusting the ISO lower.  I also found the fog machines to really affect the sharpness of the photos, especially with the guys in the back who weren’t very well lit.  Plus, since they were further back, there was just more fog between the subject and the lens.

Overall, it was an amazing concert, and I was able to combine the joy of photography with the joy of listening to live music.  I’m not sure there’s a much better combination.  Especially since the lighting was all done for me, it made for some really dramatic shots, and I didn’t even have to spend any time adjusting any flashes, it was all done for me!  Would have loved to have some more wide angle shots, and since I was there enjoying the concert, I took all the photos from one vantage point.  I can only imagine how sweet it would be to have free to wander and use a different set of lenses as well.

Also, if you want to see the settings, exif info is intact.  Download an exif viewer plugin for your browser and you’ll be able to see the settings I used.

Peace.