January 18, 2009 – Country Hall of Famer Vince Gill took the stage of the Chaifetz arena as part of an all-star line-up for the 2009 Animal Rescue Fund benefit concert.
In addition to a surprise appearance by his wife, Contemporary Christian pioneer Amy Grant, Gill shared the stage with Huey Lewis & The News and REO Speedwagon, among others.
Photographer’s Notes:
Just like the other performances of the night, this shoot went down primarily from the edges of the stage and the center aisle, as to minimize my presence to the seated front row. There was no dedicated photo pit, so I kept a low of a profile as I could at the front of the 5-foot stage, and kept a wide, low stance whenever I ventured near the center. For more specifics, you can check the notes for Huey Lewis & The News and REO Speedwagon.
The lighting for this gig was pretty straight forward, with spotlights from the front and color spots from the back. Thanks to the spotlights, the light levels were great, and allowed me to comfortably shoot around f/3.2, and 1/320, and ISO 1600 for the entirety of this short set.
Dear ISO 1600
On the note of exposure, if I had to pick one ISO setting on the D3 that was my favorite for concert photography, I would have to say that I unabashedly love ISO 1600.
In general, the utility of ISO 1600 is very high for my usage, in that it’s fast enough to be used for most tours that have dedicated lighting when shooting f/2.8 lenses. Also, with the D3, ISO 1600 is incredibly clean, delivering a great level of detail, contrast, and color fidelity.
Noise levels are so low that it’s a complete non-issue for me at this sensitivity. For push processing, the files can tolerate a stop or two of positive exposure compensation without being any worse for wear than shooting natively at the effective end sensitivity.
I could wax poetic on the D3‘s ISO 1600 – and I will – but that’s for another post. In the meantime, here’s a 100% crop of the last image of the above set.
Full image in Photoshop, with the crop area indicated:
500 x 500 px crop (100%):
Nikon D3 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 86mm. f/3.5, 1/320, ISO 1600.
Of course, part of why I love the D3 is because the same crop from my old D2x would have looked like a Seurat painting, but that’s a comparison for another day (in all seriousness, the above crop is probably how an ISO 320 or 400 shot would look on the D2x).
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, amy grant, christian, d3, live, music, Music Photography, nikon, photographer, tour, vince gill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The sharpness of your pictures are just amazing!
Hey Michael, thanks for the comment. All things being equal, I almost always prefer a highly technical execution! The Nikon 70-200mm at f/3.5 for the sample crop is definitely a factor in the perceived detail.
I’m intensely jealous. That 1600 crop is beautiful.
Hey Jason, thanks for the comment. Glad you appreciate the crop, I thought it was a good example of what the D3 can deliver at what’s easily my favorite ISO.
PS: The crop looks better in PS, too.
Great write up and photos… enjoyed it thoroughly as usual. I was finally able to take some of your advice the other night… had an opportunity to shoot in a small venue. Had a blast and leaned a couple valuable lessons for next time.
So, any plans for a “Concert Photography Post Processing” write up your tips section? :o)
Hey Jon, thanks for the comment, glad to hear you’ve been enjoying the blog. It’s great that you were able to get out and shoot a gig, too! How did it go?
I do plan on a post on my workflow and general methods for post processing. Is there anything else you’re interested in knowing that could be the topic of similar tutorials?
I think it went okay. The performer (James) was very happy with the output and mentioned he thought they were among his best performance photos (cool of him to say). But, he does normally play in poorly lit places, and I think I’m the first to shoot him with a D3 & some fast glass (used the 24-70). So while his complement is nice, I have a feeling I was competing with a bunch of his old point & shoot shots lol.
As for additional topics… perhaps how you approach composition and/or cropping? Oh, or maybe one like “When to use the 14-24″. Your 14-24′s are killer.
Yes post processing workflow tutorial would be awesome. You use mainly Nikon NX/capture for processing, but what do you use to organize all your great shots?
Like Jon – I too was able to get out and shot a concert this week for the very 1st time. Dude I am hooked – too much fun.
like a Seurat painting – Sweet.
I’ll have to dig up a file from the D2x for comparison. :)
And that is why the D3 makes me happy. It’s amazing to see what it can do, even at 3200 and 6400. The sharpness of that photo at 100% is absolutely stunning. I need to test out my d300 on that sometime, or maybe you could do a post.
How do you feel about the d3x? You gonna get one? I saw them selling them over here! But I think I’m going to have to pass… ya know, for money’s sake :)
Hey Chris,
I don’t have a D300 to test, but if you want to send me RAW files sometime, I’d be happy to analyze them. The D3 is a great, great camera. I’d say it’s the closest out of the three digital cameras I’ve owned to being perfect in terms of overall image quality. What I do miss about the D70 and D2x is the very low AA filter of both cameras, which produced some phenomenal detail with the right lenses. Still, with proper processing, the D3 is able to knock out some amazing results – and needless to say, the high ISO performance is untouchable.
Regarding the D3x, I think it looks like quite an excellent camera. It doesn’t surprise me at all that dxomark.com ranks it first out of all the competition – Nikon really seems to have pulled out all the stops with that flagship body. For portrait work, I think the 25mp sensor would be fantastic. While more pixels wouldn’t really hurt for the majority of the work I’m doing, I don’t really feel the need to upgrade in the near future.
Since the D3 has no problem printing double-truck at ISO 6400, so it’s a little hard to justify really needing much more in terms of resolution at this point. I’m going to be rocking the D3 and D700 for at least another year – after that, we’ll see!
Great shots as usual!
This isn’t really related, but I wanted to give you a heads up that when you click on your Twitter link on the right side of your blog, up at the top, it says “That page doesn’t exist!”. I think you put in an extra quotation mark at the end of your url (“).
Just wanted to let you know!
Hey Jordan,
Thanks for the heads up on the Twitter link, it should be working now. I forgot to put a quote at the beginning of the URL, so the one at the end was interpreted as extraneous.
Glad to hear you liked the shots, too!
I moved up from a D50 to D300 for the increased noise control and actually found that the D50 was not far behind it’s more expensive counterpart.
It’s great to have the extra pixels for cropping though.
I Can’t afford Nikkor fast glass so my 2.8′s are Sigma and I generally find myself in iso 1600 territory for smallish gigs. Whilst the D300 is pretty good at this iso I wish I could get what I see here on the D3 Todd.
Stunning quality!
Hey John,
Thanks for the comment. The D50 and D300 should be pretty close, you’re right. The full-frame D3, D700, and D3s are where the big jump comes, at least for now.
If I can shoot at ISO 1600 at a show, I’m as happy as a clam.