I haven't done any live gig photography for a while. So when my mate Buddy asked me to help him out documenting a showcase gig for the Bath Studio School BTEC end of year show, I was happy to oblige!
Not knowing anything about any of the bands beforehand, I was definitely jumping into the dark. I've only used my Olympus for gig photos once before whilst I was still learning its quirks. But this one was going to be a bit more full on - the gig was in Bath's Moles club which tends to be a bit dark (not that I'd have it any other way). And I didn't have time to experiment during several songs for a band as some were only on stage for five minutes. So I was chopping and changing lenses like a loon. But I'm always up for a bit of pressure!
I used four lenses throughout the night:
Olympus 14-42mm f3.5-5.6
Sigma 19mm f2.8
Panasonic 40-200mm f4-5.6
Olympus 50mm f1.8
Because of the dim light, I was manual focussing most of the time. And it was really keeping me on my toes! My Oly 50mm (an old manual lens from an OM10) was a godsend in those conditions. But I loved seeing how far I could push all my kit. I had to whack the ISO up a bit which made things a bit grainy; but I quite like that. It gives it a bit of a 90s indie feel.
It was a fun night; I learnt a lot in the space of a couple of hours about how my camera works with different lenses whilst trying to capture a lot of movement in low light.
And it was also great to see kids of a variety of ages getting up on a stage and playing decent live music. I just hope I've made images to do justice to the effort they were putting in!
Thanks to Bath's Music Workshop for asking me along.
