Nearly thirty-years after their formation, Big Head Todd & the Monsters packed out the Pageant with their blues-tinged stylings of American rock.
At the helm was the man himself, Todd Park Mohr, whose big presence on vocals and guitar alike form the core of the band’s sound. On stage, Mohr was equally at home laying down the gamut between barreling rockers and jazzy grooves, grinning all the way.
Shooting Notes:
There was no barrier for this show, so I just packed in with the crowd stage left of the lead mic at center stage.
Lighting:
The lighting for this set was relatively dark and subdued for the first three songs, unfortunately, mostly with weak, warm light from the front and stronger, multi-colored backlighting.
There was a fair amount of haze that picked up on what white light there was from the back, cutting contrast for a few shots. Nothing too wild or inventive for this set at the start, just the stock house lighting.
Lenses & Gear:
I used the Nikon D3 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 for the majority of the shots, switching to the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 for a few wider shots of the stage.
Exposure & Camera Settings:
I shot at 1/200 at f/2.8 and ISO 6400 for this set, and even this required pushing in post via EV compensation and curves.
9 Comments Add your own
1. Chris | March 11th, 2008 at 7:16 am
A solid set of images considering the lack of barrier (is this a first at the Pageant?) and the weak frontlighting. It’s 2,3,8 this time.
2. Todd | March 11th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Hey Chris, thanks for the feedback and your picks. Most of the time the barricade is set up for at least a narrow photo pit, but no dice for BHTM.
It really just depends on the band and/or what the venue perceives the security need is for a given show.
If there’s the potential for crowd surfing, there’s always a pit. For a lot of singer songwriters or individual performers, no pit.
3. Andi | March 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Tight set this time Todd. Considering your position you pulled out some really good shots.
Tomorrow I’m going to shoot a show without pit, too. First real test form my new D300 and I’m very curious how those two elements together will work out. Since it is Metal as always, there may be some heavy movement in the crowd.
4. Todd | March 11th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Hey Andi,
The lighting and situation weren’t ideal, so thanks for the feedback on these shots. It’s kind of hit or miss for pits at these more mellow shows.
Let me know how the D300 works out, I think you’ll really like it. From what I’ve seen, you can go up to ISO 3200 with no worries.
Crank it up and go wide. It’s a good thing the D300 has a metal chassis; good luck on the floor!
5. Andi | March 11th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I know that I will like her without even having shot a concert with her. Although I still lack the battery grip (and since I use one on my two D70s, I just don’t want to miss that one) the feeling with the metal body ist just great. And there are so many improvements, I’m much faster now when adjusting the settings, not to forget the gorgeous display.
I compared the noise with my D70 in Raw and Processed via Lightroom. I think the D300 has about a stop of advantage, so I may in fact use the ISO3200 if needed (on the D70 I mostly used ISO1600). I hope at least the lighting may be quite good tomorrow, but I fear I will have to pull out at least the 50 1.8 with ISO3200 to geht the shots I want.
Thanks for your wishes.
6. Todd | March 11th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hey Andi, have you tried Nikon Capture NX? I’ve found that NX really handles NEFs the best with regard to high ISO files.
You might be surprised that the one-stop advantage might turn out to be even greater with the right processing.
7. Andi | March 13th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Hey Todd,
just wanted to give you some feedback on the D300 in concert situations, since you asked.
As I already said I photographed a bigger metal concert yesterday. Since it was in a smaller venue, there was no pit but open photo policy (I was quite surprised about that) and a respectable and especially fast changing light show.
I only did play with my D300 at home, getting used to the handling, the menu and so on until then. The first band was quite difficult for me, because I had to master the D300 in action and figure out the right setting for the lighting. I switched fort and back between the metering modes “A” and “M”, ISO1600 and ISO3200, different AF-settings and so on. In the end of the first bind I was quite satisfied with the results, using either the “Dynamic AF” with 51-AF points or the 51AF-Point 3D-Tracking (based on the lightshow), which did very well, and ISO1600 to ISO3200 with 1/60 to 1/320 in manual mode.
The 6fps are perfect to capture those fast changes of different color lighting, although I noticed that I bursted quite a lot and filled my CF-cards very fast. The display is still perfect and allows me to check very accurately if the focus is on the subject or not.
I did take a little look at the NEFs after the concert, and I think ISO3200 is absolutely usable. I also did some ISO6400s to check the as well. As always, the exposure should be quite accurate to control the noise, for sure.
And not to forget, the AF: So many sharp pictures in difficult situations, kust brilliant (although there are some pictures for the trash can, for sure).
So, at the end of the first band the D300 felt this “organic” to me that I didn’t even bother to take out my D70 I brought with me as 2nd body and rather changed the lenses.
The only problem I have now is the post processing. I do know, that CNX does a very good job on reducing the noise of Nikon RAWs without the lost of important details whereas ACR/Lightroom shows much more noise. But, the biggest problem I have now (although I did only check it quick yesterday after the concert) is the interpretation of the colors. CNX is perfect, just like the reality or at least the preview image. But Lightroom changes the red to a horrible magenta which is quite overexposed. I will have to make further checks, but it seems that the current version of ACR doesn’t work very well with the D300 Nefs.
So I may have to decide between speed or quality. Could you tell me how you manage you workflow with CNX when you come home from a concert with, let’s just say, 300+ pictures ? You could also mail my, I think I already spammed your comments with that bummer here
8. Todd | March 13th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Hey Andi,
Thanks very much for the hands-on report of the D300! I’m considering picking up one of these cameras for situations that require two cameras.
I have been using Nikon View NX to do a quick sort, since it renders NEF files very quickly, and then I convert via Capture NX. From there, I open the files in PhotoShop and do any post-processing.
I look forward to your future D300 shots, they look great.
9. Andi | March 14th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Thanks. So you saw my set from the “Rockfabrik” already ? Just did put them on yesterday evening before falling asleep
I found out, that Lightroom ist still usable. I spent an hour or two on the camera calibration module, and now the color are nearly identical with those, CNX produces.
About the noise: I also did check that. CNX is doing something against the croma noise from the begin on, whereas it doesn’t affect the luminance. Lightroom, which has seperate sliders for color and luminance, leaves the color noise but changes a bit about the luminance. So, I think Lightroom is a bit “muddier” than CNX. If you do CNX right, you can just achieve a subtle noise with a very constant and small noise pattern, Lightroom is a bit rougher but easier to set up.
So in the end, i’ll stay with Lightroom. Scaled down to 800ßx I could hardly see any differences, and Lightroom is so much faster than CNX. I’ll may do some further testing, but Lightroom’s okay for me now.
speak up
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