Concert Photography

If you know me, then you know that I love music. As a musician myself, I feel that I have this extra special connection when it comes to documenting live music. I feel as if I'm able to put myself in the musicians place, and I almost have this sense of what's coming next. Truthfully, one of the most important aspects in photography is vision, the ability to catch moments before they happen, this is what makes wedding photographers so great, also a point guard on your favorite basketball team.

On this particular night I brought out my new camera, the Leica M10 & I actually brought a vintage lens with me: Canon 35mm LTM. The Canon lens is from the 50's or 60's, so it has a real vintage vibe to it, and a lot of character as well. That lens, in my opinion, is meant to be shot with black & white film, or b&w digitally. Actually, when shooting photos that night, I had my camera set to black & white, and fully intended to process everything as black & white; however, upon editing these photos when I got home, I was so drawn to the neon blue & the red lights, I couldn't help but edit a number of photos in color. I generally prefer to shoot all digital photos in color and shoot film in black & white; but when shooting with a digital camera in such low light conditions, I almost exclusively shoot in black & white.

Camera Nerd Talk Warning: The camera I shot with, Leica M10, is kind of an older camera for today's standards, the M10 came out in 2017 (gasp), that means the M10 is 5 years old! In the technological world, 5 years feels like an eternity, in fact, there have been 5 generations of iPhones that have come out since 2017. Just like iPhones, there are new cameras from every camera manufacturer coming out seemingly every year, if not 6 months; but, I actually think the M10 is perfect. Today's cameras are overly high def, which means they highlight all of the subjects beauty, but new cameras also exacerbate the subjects blemishes as well, meaning more time for the photographer in post processing.

Okay, rant over. All of this to say that the M10 does a great job in low light, without being overly sharp, but plenty sharp to capture a band performing in extremely low light; for those familiar with cameras & camera settings, I shot all of the photos below at Iso 6400, Shutter Speed 1/30, & F/2. Although the photos were shot at less than desirable settings, I feel that the photos came out plenty sharp, the colors were more than useable, and there's practically no noise (digital grain). The next time I bring out the M10 for a show, I intend on pushing the camera even further, I'm going to try shooting at Iso 8000, & see if my hands are steady enough for shooting at 1/15th of a second.

Thanks for reading! Until next time.