The Moody Blues in Ottawa – a GREAT concert captured by the F550EXR

Scotiabank Place was host to the Moody Blues on Thursday evening. They are one of the bands that started the progressive rock genre in the 60s. In fact, this concert occurs about 44 years after they released the seminal Days of Future Past, an album that continues to shine as a beacon of that style.

Karen sent me a link to the Ottawa Citizen’s review of the concert and I was surprised that they displayed a snarky edge towards the band. It moves back and forth from complements like “Guitarist Justin Hayward still rocks out with feeling” to unpleasant digs like “The band took a break after 10 songs, possibly for a nap” …

I for one had never seen them live before, even though I had bought 8 straight albums starting at Days of Future Past as a teenager. The opportunity to see them live was thus an absolute gift from my perspective. Although I am a bit upset at the Citizen for reporting so harshly, I am even more upset at my city for insulting the band with an anemic 2,000 fans at this concert. My guess is that they will give us a well-deserved miss on the next tour, although I hope not …

So … back to the concert …

I have a memory like a sieve any more, so I cannot recall the set list, but setlist.fm has the set list for the Halifax stop on the same tour and inspecting it leads me to believe that they are maintaining a pretty rigid set list on this tour … but a great one. Here’s a copy of the set list:

The stage itself is nicely decked out. They project some very nice graphics during the show, including a pretty wild trip through worm-hole-like tunnels for the song “Question.” Here is the view from the 8th row stage right where Karen and I were seated.

F550EXR 3200 ISO, f/4.1, 1/25s

Since Michael Pinder and Ray Thomas are retired, the band travels with a quartet of excellent musicians to fill the band out. Here is what the Citizen said about the quartet …

The trio's sound was filled out by a crack quartet - second drummer Gordon Marshall, Alan Hewitt on keyboards, Norda Mullen on flute and guitar and Julie Ragins on keyboard, guitar and vocals. The additional musicians created a wall of sound so that Peak Hour was a slab of strobe-lit psychedelic pyrotechnics.

I captured about 95% of The Voice but received a tap on the shoulder and an admonition that there is no video recording allowed in the ScotiaBank Center. What a joke … as if anyone cares about all the myriad mediocre compact camera videos floating around on YouTube. The bands should be happy to get the free advertising … anyway, here it is as recorded by the Panasonic ZS3. The ZS3 does a very nice job in my opinion.

Justin Hayward played the intro to one of the following songs, and that’s the only time I saw him play anything but keyboards.

F550EXR 2500ISO, f/5.3, 1/60s

At this point I realized two things … the exposures were two slow, which was risking sharpness and blowouts, and RAW+jpg was eating space for no reason. I never process the jpegs anyway, as the RAW is invariably superior in tone.

So I switched the camera to RAW only and manual mode, where I basically bounced back and forth between 1600ISO and 3200ISO and shot from 1/160s through 1/200s to gain extra sharpness at the long end.

I shot most of the concert in AF center mode, and I added face detect for the latter half. I think it helps off and on and is worth trying at concerts. Multi AF is a waste of time as it is no better at locking on.

I found the clarity of the images from the F550 to be excellent. Fine hair like Justin Hayward’s shows up with a surprising amount of texture, even at 3200 ISO. This is a combination of Fuji’s excellent sensor and the rather bright lighting on the performers. But it works better than with any of the previous EXR cameras. I include the F200 in that comment since it not only has less than half the reach of the F550 but also has no RAW. So it is pretty much hamstrung for the kind of shooting I enjoy at a concert.

Here’s Hayward early on …

A nice shot of the band … that looks like the cover of Threshold in the background …

Some of the images I got have astounding sharpness, especially considering the distance and ISO settings … this one of John Lodge is an example of how sharp this cam can get …

Here is a nice close up of Julie Ragins through the fog. She augments the vocals in the band, no doubt providing some of the missing high tones that Pinder once provided.

A nice shot here of the remaining original members of the modern version of the Moodies …

And another astoundingly clear image of John Lodge.

A terrific image of John with the band’s flautist, Norda Mullen and Julie Ragins at keyboards, who you saw earlier. Norda’s flute is every bit as nice as Thomas’s … but too bad she can’t sing some of the greats like “The Tide Rushes In” …

They went all pink for a while then and I concentrated on Justin for a bit …

These images with glow are part of my second series processed this evening. The early set were processed without any glow. I like this effect as it showcases the ethereal nature of their music.

A nice isolation shot of Justin and Graeme …

And one of John …

Here’s one that screamed for a black and white treatment and I like how it came out …

Here I caught Alan Hewitt napping for a moment … of course I am kidding. The camera often catches moments like this … I included it because I don’t have a lot of good images of Alan.

Here’s the best image I have of Gordon Marshall. He augments Graeme’s drumming and, truth be told, he does a whole lot of the tougher stuff. One must give Graeme a break though, as he turned 70 in March. Anyone able to withstand the rigors of touring at that age deserves a hat’s off …

Another superb capture of John …

A better shot of Alan …

And another of John …

And the originals in a nice group shot …

A nice shot of Gordon in action …

Julie in isolation with Norda in shadow in front …

Later in the concert, Graeme Edge came out from behind the drums and spoke. He recited the song “Higher and Higher”, which I believe was written by Graeme but originally spoken by Michael Pinder. Graeme did a great job though and even treated the audience with an amusing dance around the stage. It worked, and really well in my opinion.

At various times, the audience stood for them, but one must remember that the average age of the fans is a little up there :-)

Approaching the end of the concert, these guys are really turning it on …

This is a large subset of what I shot, but if you would like to see the whole series, then click here to go to my album.

Meanwhile, here is the tail end of Knights in White Satin, followed by the finale – Question – and the encore – Ride my See Saw” ….

A lot of people whine and moan about how bad the video is on the F550EXR. Well, this one is straight from the camera and it definitely does not suck. A little too much focus hunting, but it still manages to get them in focus at full zoom most of the time. And the sound is just as good as the sound on the ZS3 (which shot the opening video of the concert) … this is another thing that the F550 does better than any of the other EXR cameras as well …

And yes, I was able to defy “the man” and get this long recording because I simply posed as if I was not recording at all. This is why the video is not as smooth as the ZS3 video … for that one I could use proper hand holding technique but for this one I had to use stealthy technique, which pretty much sucks :-)

All in all, we had a very nice time. The Moodies were just great, despite the crappy turn out. I remain ashamed of the insult we gave them, but cannot help but be impressed that they gave us their all anyway … true professionals.