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What’s in the bag?

What’s in the bag?

In the run-up to the Bristol Sound & Vision show, I thought it would be a good idea to showcase precisely what equipment we might typically take to cover a show, and why. It also gives us an opportunity to pose a question about show coverage.

Show reports in general aren’t too demanding on camera equipment, and in great fairness, the limitations placed by this website mean that the smallest sensor inside the cheapest smartphone would notionally be sufficient for the task in hand. However, a property of many audio shows is that exhibitors are frequently in hotel bedrooms with the curtains drawn and the lights turned low. It’s not a unique property – I can think of at least one other photographic job where music is playing in a hotel bedroom with drawn curtains and the lights turned low – but in an audio show setting, photographing a black box in a darkened room is pushing the limits of a smartphone camera.

This is why most audio journalists take some kind of dedicated camera to an audio show. Modern camera systems are extremely competent in low light settings, so the actual choice of camera is more about personal taste and use beyond the audio show environment. My choice here is the Fuji X-T1 camera; a 16MP mirrorless design. The main advantage to this mirrorless type of camera (as opposed to a DSLR) is its weight, its ability to preview images through the viewfinder, and excellent out-of-the-camera JPEG images that need little or no post processing. It’s not the fastest focusing camera money can buy, and it can burn through batteries fairly rapidly, but for reportage, street and travel photography, and product photography as used here, the X-T1’s performance more than exceeds demands.

, What’s in the bag?

When two photographers meet now, they invariably talk settings. To address their needs, a photographer can adjust the way a camera operates, and the Fuji X-T1 is no exception: here comes the nerdy bit. For this kind of show – if there is time – I will use the camera on a tripod and keep the camera at base ISO (ISO200), otherwise I keep the camera in Auto ISO, with an upper ISO limit of ISO1600 and the lower limit at ISO200 and the minimum shutter speed of 1/60th second. Although I tend to use the out-of-camera JPEGs, I set the camera to record JPEG+RAW as a matter of course, just in case that once in a lifetime image needs some lovin’ after I took the shot. The Fuji’s WB system is typically very good, but the complex lighting found at a show can throw even the best auto system off the scent, so I’ve started including a fold-out Lastolite Eybalance, and taking a custom balance from that.

I set the camera’s film simulation mode to Provia (a good balance of tonality and saturation, especially as the vibrant colours of the Velvia mode can be overpowering when photographing black boxes next to wooden cabinets), keep DR at DR100, Sharpness at +1 and Noise Reduction at -1, keeping the highlight and shadow settings at their zero point. I also use single-point AF-S, usually relying on back-button ‘manual’ focus, and turn off the auto image review and turn on high performance mode. I tend to use the camera in aperture priority, often with +2/3rds of a stop exposure compensation.

 

I have a number of lenses in the Fuji ecosystem, but for a show like Bristol Sound & Vision, I have selected just two. For most of the show, I will use the extremely good, lightweight Fuji 18-55mm f/2.8-4 XF OIS zoom. This covers the region from wide to moderate telephoto, has excellent image stabilisation should I need it, and is surprisingly sharp and vibrant, especially when used between f/5.6 and f/8. Of course, using the lens at those apertures in darkened rooms demands the use of a tripod, and we’ll come on to that later. The other lens is a new one – the Fuji 35mm f/2 XF WR. This small, standard lens is fast, light, silent, makes excellent images, and has one huge advantage over the zoom – it’s weather sealed. Anyone who has stood outside the Marriott City Centre hotel taking photographs on a cold, wet morning in late February will know why that’s important – it’s like standing in a freezing cold car wash!

, What’s in the bag?

Until Las Vegas this year, when I managed to ever-so-slightly ‘ding’ the front elements of two lenses in one day, the only protection for the glass at the front of my lenses was the lens hood. However, in the wake of my bad glass day, I’ve been reconsidering this position. I use a B+W 007 filter on the front of my Fuji X100S effectively as a lens cap, and I haven’t seen a significant downturn in picture quality. Nevertheless, I’m still wary of doing this.

In addition to the camera and lenses, I will bring along two vital tools – a Fuji EF42 flash (and an off-camera cable) and a Manfrotto BeFree travel tripod. Because of the offset tripod screw thread on the X-T1, to use this camera with a tripod is best done with one of the many optional hand grips available. This combination gives me up to three different ways to ‘nail’ the exposure with minimum noise – tripod with available light, or hand-held with flash (in both cases usually with the camera set to ISO 200), or available light (with the camera in auto ISO up to ISO1600). In the last case, the lens is usually set ‘wide open’.

Alongside this, I normally take a Marantz PMD-610 audio recorder, pen and pad, business cards, Altoids, hand sanitiser gel, water bottle, spare batteries for anything that needs a battery, and anything else that will fit in a Domke F2 bag. A curious difference between reviewers from the US and UK here is our American counterparts often bring their own music to shows, and we rarely do. I’ve never been able to quite fathom that one out.

I said at the outset that there is a question to be posed. And it is this: this year at Bristol, I’m trying out video content as an experiment. We aren’t even sure if this can be hosted on our site, and my camera is not one best suited to video recording. However, to this end, I have borrowed an AVX wireless ME2 lavalier microphone system from those jolly nice people at Sennheiser for the duration to see if we can make this work. The AVX system is an incredibly easy wireless microphone system to use – you charge it up like a phone, through USB, you pair the microphone sender to the receiver like Bluetooth and as long as you know how to record manually and know how to plug XLR and mini jack cables in, everything is straightforward and described in visual terms on a two sides of a sheet of A3 paper. Even an audiophile reviewer couldn’t mess this up.

, What’s in the bag?

We’ll try this in earnest at Bristol as a kind of test bench. It may prove a horrible mistake. It may not work, it may not be able to be hosted, the camera may turn every loudspeaker grille into a hopeless moiré-fest, or worse. But we are going to give it a try.

, What’s in the bag?

What could possibly go wrong?

Tags: FEATURED

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