The mainact of the evening was Status Quo. With about 5000 fans screaming for the Band, the show started under a good star. Energetic and with a smirk on their faces, the Band seemed to enjoy the show and was interacting with the audience during the whole time. Especially Bandleader Francis Rossi was pulling one face after the next, but never seemed to miss getting into the rockstar poses in between. I thought the Sound was quite enjoyable and the guitars got quite a lot of dirt in the mix with a lots of intensity, a thing, that I hadn’t expected.
I shot this show for virtualnights, thanks goes out to Michael.

Shooting Notes
The light this evening was awesome. I can’t remember the last time I had this much light on a stage in a concerthall… I definitly have to go and shoot those big events more often. I got the ISO up to 800, which was more like ISO 400 do to the good light and was shooting with a shutter speed of 1/250 to 1/640 at apertures of 2.8 up to 3.5 matching the shutter speeds. There was not a lot of thinking involved setting up the camera and I could concentrate on framing the guys on stage. The only thing I had to watch out for was ajusting the shutter speed when the bandmembers stepped away from their mics and a bit to the side out of the beam of the spots. The light was about 2 stops darker, so you had to pay attention to chance settings as soon as they started moving.
I was shooting this set with the Canon EOS 40D and the EF L 24-70 f2.8 and the EF L 70-200 f2.8. Again I wished for a nice wide angle lens or at least a full frame body to really use the 24mm to get a bit more of the atmosphere in the shot. The first Song was shot completely with the 24-70 and in the middle of the second Song I switched over to the 70-200 to get some close ups. Not one second to early, because we got thrown out of the pit right after the second Song.

Tags: 24.10.2009, Düsseldorf, Philipshalle, Status Quo

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