The Jeffrey Lewis gig on Thursday was superb. New York Howl were the touring support and were hugely enjoyable. The singer was very tall and they had a bass saxaphone, which is always a pleasure. Faceometer, the local(ish) singer-songwriter, was also tremendous and certainly someone to watch in the future. I bought all their CDs, which is not something I do very often.
And if that’s the level of gig review writing I’m capable of these days maybe I’d better not bother repeating Going Deaf For A Fortnight this November as I’d been pondering doing. Thankfully the mighty Russ L emailed out of the blue asking if he might take the baton and in my usual convoluted way I said why the hell not.
So I’ll be looking for a new challenge this winter. I expect one will just pop out of the blue at me as they tend to do that. I wonder what it’ll be?
Regarding the above photo, this was the first time I took the D70 to a gig and while shooting at 1600 iso was useful it was very clear that the kit lens (18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5) isn’t very useful for gigs. Thankfully, with the money from the sale of the S7000, I’ve got a 50mm prime lens on order that goes down to f1.8 which, if you’ve no idea what I’m blathering on about, is a good thing. Though after the success of the Supersonic photos I’m thinking I might just go with b/w film at gigs from now on. We’ll see.
Five photos made the cut. Here’s the other four:
You’re going to love that 50mm f1.8. Sharp, very narrow depth of field when fully open, and feather light as well. Plus it’s a lens you can almost afford to drop on a concrete floor and not have a heart attack (a friend dropped his 20mm f2.8 at the Houston Astrodome’s very last baseball game and cried all the way home). How was the D70 at getting what you wanted to get (i.e. was there a shutter lag problem)? Is that why the FM2 + film option could be the best way to go?
I’m very sceptical of the concept of shutter lag. Yes it exists, especially on compacts, but it always seems to me to be related to autofocus. Switch to manual focus and it usually goes away (except you then have to focus yourself which takes longer. Such is life!)
Happy to say there’s no noticable shutterlag on the D70. My reasons for shooting film at gigs are purely aesthetic – I lurve that Ilford Delta 3200 grain!
I laugh, laugh and laugh at the thought of my gig-related waffling being in any way more worthwhile than the above.
If you’re looking for something big for this winter, perhaps now would be the time to enquire about your mooted Outer Circle project. What’s a-happening with that, if you don’t mind us all asking?
~ Russ L