2x Spain in Hamburg

Last night I saw another great concert at the Fabrik club in Hamburg: Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White.  I like all three of them and I wanted to photograph, so I was at the Fabrik an hour early.

Normally this is early enough in order to get a spot directly at the stage with no one in front of me, but last night the crowd was so big, that the best I managed was second row.  However, and luckily so, during that one hour of waiting for the concert to begin people go to get a drink, go to the toilette, etc. and with this natural movement, I was able to get a position all the way up front.

The stage at the Fabrik is so small that people with front positions are no more than 2-3 meters away from the artists.  This is really great since you don’t have to use a tele, and as usual I only had my 40D with a 50/1.8 and 17-40/4 with me.

It’s not easy to shoot at the Fabrik: the light is fairly low, so I have to go to ISO 800 with the normal lens and ISO 1600 with the zoom, the DOF is very shallow and the AF of the 40D is really at its limit.  Add to that my three moving subjects and a club owner, who allows photography only during the first music piece, and you get the picture.

Since photography is not my main concern during a great concert, I mostly forget about the camera and just enjoy the music.  But every 15 min or so I think about it, take the camera out from underneath my coat and sneak in a few frames.

Last night I went home with about 90 frames and here you are seeing the top six.  I didn’t do almost any editing: slight crops, a bit of of recovery to tame the highlights and a tad of clarity, all applied in about 15 seconds each.

And the music?  Great!  Among other things we were treated to two very different renditions of Spain, one during the main concert and one as encore — both superb.

Pastel Abstracts

You might be wondering why the long pause since my last post. Well, let’s say that I haven’t been feeling very inspired for quite a while — I hope it doesn’t last much longer…

On a positive note, since Oct 1 I have a new job and a new office in a new building. Tonight, upon leaving the office, I noticed the cool lights on the wall, so I ran out and came back with my camera and tripod. Even though it was just a single wall with three lights, I had no trouble coming up with five different motives, all shot in less than 10 minutes.

(click on the image to see it larger)

Not only have I not posted anything on this blog in the last two months, but I really haven’t shot almost any images in that time!  And tonight I painfully felt the lack of practice.  I almost forgot to check the selected aperture, forgot to set mirror lock-up, or set the ISO back to 100…

Color Abstract

Nikon D700 for a Serious Amateur?

I’ve had more free time lately, so I’ve been photographing more often and also sorting and rating my photographs from the past 12 months.  In a sense I’ve been rediscovering my hobby, and I’ve started feeling the desire for a full-frame camera again: less DOF, better high-ISO performance, larger viewfinder, no conversion factor, etc.  Although 6 months ago I decided that I don’t need a full-frame body, I allowed myself to at least consider the alternatives and get informed.  Since size and weight matter to me, and I’ve never had much interest in Minolta or Sony, I’m left with two choices: Nikon D700 and Canon 5D mark II.

So I read up on the Nikon: the baby D3 is nevertheless big, heavy and expensive, but it’s very, very appealing.  It’s a true photographer’s camera: absolute top AF and high-ISO performance, excellent viewfinder, easy mirror lock-up, built-in viewfinder blind, etc, etc, etc.  For a moment I even considered switching from Canon to Nikon.  Now, this is all just a mental game, so I went through the exercise.

Only few things remained unchanged from the times of film, but the following truth still holds: choosing a camera body forces you to choose a camera system.  My current system consists of a wide-angle zoom, a normal prime, a portrait prime, a tele-zoom, a flash and a remote release, and I am a big fan of Canon’s f/4 zooms.  I’ve found the 17-40, 24-105 and 70-200 to hit the optimal compromise between size, weight, price and optical quality, and I was very disappointed to find out that all of Nikon’s high-quality FX zooms are f/2.8.  They might be better than Canon’s, especially the wide-angles ones, but the extra stop brings a along a huge penalty in size, weight and price.

Still, Nikon’s appeal was so strong, that I went to Calumet and played with a D700 and a 24-70/2.8.  Pretty quickly, with a pinch of regret and a huge sigh of relief, I decided that the combo is too large and heavy, too expensive to simply toss it in the trunk of the car, and the 24-70 is too short for a one-lens combination.

So while I find the D700 to be the perfect body for a serious amateur like me, the FX zooms are clearly “too professional” for me.  If Nikon made a series of f/4 zooms, my life would become very difficult, but as things are, I’m back to my three old options:

1. stay with the Canon 40D and ignore full-frame for a few more years,
2. add a Canon 5D and a 24-105/4 to my system, or
3. add a Canon 5D mark II and a 24-105/4 to my system.

Alternative 1 is already very good, but alternatives 2 and 3 have the following advantages:

• larger viewfinder and better high-ISO performance,
• a perfect portrait system (less DOF),
• extreme wide angle capability: 5D with 17-40,
• 5D with 24-105 alone is good enough for most photographic situations, so I can carry less gear on non-photographic trips,
• 5D with 24-105 and 40D with 70-200 give me continuous coverage from 24 to 320 mm (due to the 1.6 crop factor of the 40D), so I might never have to change lenses again!

The last two points are very important to me, because I’ve had problems with dust and missed shots in India, both due to constantly changing lenses.

As Abstract as it Gets