Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Tragically Hip -- National Arts Center Ottawa -- 28 September 2009

OMFG! This is the 4th time I've seen the Hip live and this was utterly mind blowing. It didn't hurt that I had tickets in the 4th row at the NAC ...


Is that cool or what :-) Looking back at the Southam Hall ...


The Hip came on pretty much on time and I started filming ... the images that appear on this blog are from songs that I did not recognize or care for ... but I recorded 2 hours and 9 minutes of music, which I have mastered into a movie and which is being rendered to a PS sized image as I write this. I tried rendering it in full 640x480 with high quality 2-pass video, but Nero Vision reported that it would take 37 hours ... so I chose the PSP format, which is still quite good and takes 50 minutes :-).

There are 40 images total, but I only show some of them here. To see the whole set, go to my gallery in this album.

The set list was pretty great ... Nick says we did well. We got a song that he's been waiting for for 5 shows ... now I forget which one :-)


Anyway .... back to Gord Downey. He is the most compelling stage artist I have ever seen, and I've seen Mick Jagger live. Gord is simply incredible ... watch my movie when it gets posted (YouTube cannot suck in that big a movie, and I refuse to post 25 separate files there, so I have to come up with some other technique. I'll post it here when I figure it out.)


The lighting was typically Hip ... lots of bright spots and excellent overall ambiance on stage.


It is rarely dark on stage, but once in a while you get a black background. The Canon G10 was my only option because the Fuji F70EXR is still missing in action. The Fuji would have handled the images better (by a nose) ... but the Canon handled the video brilliantly. I have decided that I must keep both ...



Gord always carries a hanky ... he sweats like a pig.





Gord's dancing is something to behold. He combines it with movements with the mic stand or with the hanky so that it becomes a form of art on its own. He shows you facial expressions that convey surprise when he fails to catch the mic after kicking it up with his feet for example. It's very entertaining ...

He almost always breaks a mic stand and tosses parts into the audience after twirling it like a baton. I have that stuff in the film. This film is 2:09:46 long and contains some amazing footage of Gord Downey interacting with the audience. It gets a little jumpy after an hour or so, as you can imagine the pain it gave me to hold the camera over my head for that long ... anyway, you can download it here. This is a 600MB file, though, so be aware of how long it will take!

Anyway .... enough said. If you have never seen the Hip live, you owe it to yourself to do so. I mean it ....




7 comments:

crazyfootballmom said...

I have seen the Stones, U2 and The Eagles but I have never seen The Hip. Trust it was a good concert,great pics.

Kim Letkeman said...

Thanks. It was an amazing concert ... download the movie ... it's actually quite good, if I do say so myself. Nick says that he's watched a lot of bootlegs with sound not as good.

So sue me said...

>2 hours with yr trusty camera over your head?! Ironman!
Brilliant pics...I'll check out the vid

Kim Letkeman said...

Thanks Sue. Yeah ... my arms were dead for quite some time ... but it was worth it ... I watched the vid all the way through the other day and saw things that only people within 10 feet of him would have seen. Very cool ...

Unknown said...

Kim, First of all I want to thank you for taking the time to post your comments on the Fugi F70. I have been following your blog and posts on DP Review since you purchased the camera.
I purchased mine a few weeks ago to replace the F10. I just like to take photos at concerts. No video has I would rather just purchase a bootleg dvd.

Now my question. I am going to see Kiss Saturday and Monday. I always used my f10 to take Concert photos with good results. I would set it at auto and 800 ISO.
How would you set up the F70. I do no post processing at all. Just down load and post to Facebook.

Thank you in advance.

Kim Letkeman said...

I really wish that I’d had the chance to test my techniques with the F70 at the Hip concert. They obviously worked very well with the G10, which is nowhere near as clean as the F70 at 800 ISO …

If the KISS concert is as well lit as the Hip concert (very likely) then my techniques should work pretty well …

I zoom in to check results periodically … if you find that you don’t like what you are seeing, then fall back to the same settings you used with the F10 but stay in 5mp mode …

This is basically what I did to get these Hip images … very little processing required.

1) M mode.
2) M size (5mp) … I prefer 3:2 but any aspect ratio will work
3) Shutter at 1/100s … drop to 1/80s if need be, but you may get more blur.
4) DR400%
5) Aperture wide open.
6) ISO at 400 or 800 … if you zoom very close, you may need to jump to 1600.
7) Watch for overexposure and raise shutter first until you hit 1/100s, then drop ISO if still too bright.
8) If you see things too dark, drop shutter to 1/80s then raise ISO if still too dark.

The last 2 steps are a bit tricky because you are in manual and have to try to maintain a balance between ISO and shutter.

In practice it is less complex than it sounds … experiment inside a bit shooting at lights to see what I mean …

I mostly just pop up and down with ISO and tweak shutter rarely …

Remember that slightly dark looks better than burned out …

Please post back to the forum when you have the images … I am very curious how the F70 will handle it …

Unknown said...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12673028@N08/

-------------------
Kim, I posted the photos to Flickr.
I want to thank you for all your help. I shot it the way you advised.
I am really happy with the results.
I was in the 7th row on the floor.

I kept the shutter at 1/100 never dropped it to 80.

I was in ISO 800 for most of the photos should have dropped to 400 more often. I think a lot of the photos came out brighter. Paul's flesh looks over exposed.
Kiss shows are very bright with lights, pyros, smoke, sparklers and confetti. A lot of stuff going on.
I am really happy with the camera. The zoom is unreal.

I am reaching here. The only things I would change on the camera are:
1- I think the zoom is too fast. You go from 0-10 in a split second.
2-An ISO toggle would be nice.
Again I am reaching here. The camera is fine.

Thanks I look foward to your feedback. I get another shot at Kiss on Monday this time from the fifth row.

Thank you again for your help.
Mike