Music festival season is over (AFAIK) over here, and I upped myself this year by going to two, concluding with this multi-stage Strawberry Music Festival.
Broken Promises
The venue was at World Expo Park, and upon realizing that, I knew another thing I could do: I could bike-ride myself there. I did, and for two days of this three-day event, I went, lugging the fairly unused Canon 60D on my first day (April 29), and the new Lumix GF3 on the second (April 30).
This time, though I did bring the trusty 300m Takumar f3.5 mammoth lens, I decided to stick out my hours in front of the “School of Rock” stage, where I could should with my preferred wide lenses, since I can be ridiculously near the stage. Case in point:
Before The Daylight
This band (Before The Daylight) was the obvious highlight for that day. They were metal, she was growling, and wondrous to behold. That Katy Perry song insert was a bad, bad idea though.
The closing band for that day (The OXOX) could have worked, but the grungy vocals was way off with the garage rock sound they had.
I posed a challenge for myself the second day, and had the GF3 go through its gig shoot baptismal. Quick verdict? It was satisfactory, but 14mm proved to be too wide an angle for that gig.
Though it had notable low ISO performance, it did not catch up to the day’s closer, Broken Promises. They were another metal band with a lady-growler, and I guess its apparent by now this band formula is a personal weakness. By that time, I was only getting red-tinted photos, and had to do a quick custom white balance using my palm to get something acceptable. I was more than glad the fetching vocalist stayed put for what I think is my winning shot for the event (see first photo of this post).
EDIT:
Tried to do a GF3 video capture as well. Not great (because of the whack custom white balance I did, turned on the anti-shake feature on Youtube, didn’t turn on resolution viewing options), but good enough:
Broken Promises (video)
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An afterthought from these past music festivals had me think about getting a telephoto lens, which I’ve foregone for the longest time, since I haven’t deemed it a justified purchase. I do have my eye on this, but the far-off subject itch needs to be felt again first.
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