Some Concert Pics From Friday Night

I was fortunate enough to land front row seats to see a couple guitar heroes of mine, Roger McGuinn and Marty Stuart, at the Musikfest Cafe in Bethlehem, PA on Friday night. I was even more fortunate that the venue and artist do not prohibit still photography. So, armed with my D600 and my 24-85mm (and wondering if I should have pulled the trigger on a 24-120mm earlier in the week - turns out I didn't need it) I parked my butt in my seat and enjoyed the heck out of the evening.

All shots are in Aperture mode, shot between f/7.1-f/9, camera set to Auto ISO with a max of 6400 and a min shutter speed of 1/80s, with most/all being at max ISO. Shots were minimally post processed using Nik Dfine 2.0 to cool the noise and Viveza 2 to tweak some shadows.

The full complement of shots can be seen in this Flickr set: Marty Stuart & Roger McGuinn, Musikfest Cafe 2013-11-08 - a set on Flickr

I'd love to get me a Nudie suit.

Very nice! Shoulda jumped on stage!

Very nice low light photos, Jake. I'm a surprised you chose such a small aperture. And I'm even more surprised how nice these turned out despite the high ISO. I'm shooting a gig this Thursday at the Maryjanes underground at the Hard Rock cafe San Diego. I'm thinking I'll give the higher ISO's a try.

Great looking shots! Awesome job my friend!

Nice great job Jake.

BackdoorHippie said:

I was fortunate enough to land front row seats to see a couple guitar heroes of mine, Roger McGuinn and Marty Stuart, at the Musikfest Cafe in Bethlehem, PA on Friday night. I was even more fortunate that the venue and artist do not prohibit still photography. So, armed with my D600 and my 24-85mm (and wondering if I should have pulled the trigger on a 24-120mm earlier in the week - turns out I didn't need it) I parked my butt in my seat and enjoyed the heck out of the evening. All shots are in Aperture mode, shot between f/7.1-f/9, camera set to Auto ISO with a max of 6400 and a min shutter speed of 1/80s, with most/all being at max ISO. Shots were minimally post processed using Nik Dfine 2.0 to cool the noise and Viveza 2 to tweak some shadows. The full complement of shots can be seen in this Flickr set: Marty Stuart & Roger McGuinn, Musikfest Cafe 2013-11-08 - a set on Flickr

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I am amused by how the strap is attached! I don't think I've seen anything quite like it.

hark said:

I am amused by how the strap is attached! I don't think I've seen anything quite like it.

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That's actually fairly typical of F-style mandolins, and vintage mandos in particular. No one wants to add holes to them.

Dave_W said:

Very nice low light photos, Jake. I'm a surprised you chose such a small aperture. And I'm even more surprised how nice these turned out despite the high ISO. I'm shooting a gig this Thursday at the Maryjanes underground at the Hard Rock cafe San Diego. I'm thinking I'll give the higher ISO's a try.

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I wanted to make sure I got interplay among the guys in the band, and I got what I wanted. I would have hated to get one guy tack sharp as he leans into another and have the other guys soft. I'm so confident in the D600's ability to give me acceptable noise at high ISO that it wasn't even a worry for me, even when my shutter speed went below the min 1/80s that I had set with the Auto ISO. I would have loved to have brought the D800 in as well, but that's pushing your luck in a concert venue with no photo credential.

​Beautiful photography and clicks.

Impressively clean images.

Great shots Jake. The D 600's sensor is really great.

Marcel said:

Great shots Jake. The D 600's sensor is really great.

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It truly is, Marcel. Just to give you an idea of what kind of "noise" I was dealing with at ISO 6400, here are three copies of a close crop for one of the photos above.

Copy 1: Straight out of the camera into Lightroom, no adjustments. Slightly underexposed (on purpose).




Copy 2: Same as above but with a click of the "Auto" exposure adjustment. Noise is now evident, but not horrible given the ISO level.




Copy 3: Copy 2 with the Lightroom Noise Reduction only (slider moved from 0 to 41), no other adjustments or sharpening.




As you can see, you don't need a lot of NR software to make a more than usable image (I prefer Nik Dfine's ability to control based on color instead of just global NR reduction). I could have easily done all of my work in Lightroom and been more than OK if I needed to. It's a great low light camera. Heck, it's just a great camera.

Great looking shots Jake - nice work