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The Sony A7R at the Hollywood Bowl at Night!

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
In this narrative, I'll explain as I go on, limitations of lens and camera choice and the challenges one faces in musical performance photography. In locations where there are tens of thousands of ticket-paying fans, there's a fear of photographers for both good and silly reasons.

Obviously, in a classical music concert where people are paying 50 to hundreds of dollars for a seat, there must be no distracting flashes going off! Clicking of loud shutters is so rude and annoying. However, experienced photographers know to only take pictures as the soloist is introduced or later as the audience applauds. If one is super-disciplined, one can time a shutter release with a loud portion of the music and take just a single isolated performance shot that will disturb no one. That's what I planned to do, if possible, tonight!

But first one needs a lens long enough to reach the center of the stage with enough pixels devoted to the soloist. Unfortunately, they check for any large lens as one enters and a smart security fellow considered the Sony A7r with a 55mm Zeiss lens obviously too professional, (I so regretted having the lens hood on adding nearly 3" in length). Meanwhile, folk with digicams and 8-40 MP phones phones poured past me through the gate! Well I had no chip or battery in mine ;) and the chief fellow there let me through! A lucky break!

This concept of cameras being "evil" is so obviously silly at a time when cell phones make excellent video with pretty good sound recording of the concerts! If one looks carefully, there are always 2-3 people somewhere within viewing distance filming the performance with a cell phone camera! So why was I so concerned to get pictures this night of all nights?

Well this was a very special evening. Simone Porter a 17 year old violinst from the Colburn School of Music, was the soloist. I have photographed her for years. This talented youngster has, for years, commuted from Seattle to Los Angeles to be tutored in the famous Heifetz Studio at the Colburn School of Music by the acclaimed pedagogue, Bob Lipsett. His violin studio has trained an unstoppable series of talented violinists. To join this elite group, one has to not only be already talented, have mastered much of the expected classical repertoire, but also face competition from scores of other equally remarkable violinists, (11-18 years old).

I have photographed her in the Heifetz Studio at various concerts and at a recital for School "Supporters" and Board Members in my own home.

It's a thrill for me to have also had the opportunity to record, as best I could, Simone at her inaugural solo appearance at the packed Hollywood Bowl, a natural amphitheater built into a valley below the surrounding hills.

So I'll be posting pictures of Simone. But first, I'll go to the very end of the evening's program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and share with you a an ambitious project of stitching some 70 shots of the fireworks display over the orchestra's shell. The only lens I could smuggle in was the 55mm Zeiss 1.8L FE for the Sony A7r. It has sufficient acuity to get the orchestra on stage and low light sensitivity to capture the fireworks and detail of the stage with it's very challenging high dynamic range - the over-bright stage and the deep darkness all around. I should have also brought with my favorite must have digicams, the Ricoh GXR with a fine 50mm lens and the superbly built Ricoh GR with a focal length of 28 mm and an add-on lens reducing that to a fine 21mm. But it was not such a day!

2014_09_DSC226_Hollywood bowl CopelandFireworks_Finale.jpg


Asher Kelman: The Finale at the Hollywood Bowl for Copeland's Appalachian Spring

40 of 70 images from the Sony A7r with a Zeiss 55mm f1.8 lens using Autoano Giga

AP Giga took 7 hours to stitch the images and often crashed for lack of memory,
I gave up further editing within AP Giga and just saved my result.
The stitched image was then corrected for orthogonality with DXO Perspective
and edited for blending explosions occurring at different times,
using the Clone stamp and Eraser tools in separate layers in Photoshop CC.

The 17" Macbook Pro with 8GB of RAM was monitored by the app, Memory
Clean, to purge the memory when free RAM dropped below 1200 MB.



To get a sense of the architectural richness of the entire area and diverse community of students at the Colburn School of Music, on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, opposite The Walt Disney Concert Hall in glistening stainless steel, by Frank Gehry, you might also enjoy looking at these pictures of the Colburn Conservatory Orchestra from 2009, a 360 degree Pano of the inner quadrangle between the main buildings of the Colburn School Campus on Grand Avenue and one of our favorite cellists, then age 15, performing in concert.



Your comments are most welcome. This picture is from the "out of camera jpgs" (as Autopano giga can't handle Sony RAW file format), and will be rebuilt from the RAW files, processed to .tif form and then, the much larger files assembled, for which I need to seriously update my computer RAM, LOL!! Still, I didn't want to hold back this jpg-derived draft image until then, so I hope it gives you as much enjoyment as it has for me. :)


Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Discussion of lens choice, where they frown on "pro-looking" cameras and especially long bold lenses!

When I'm the official photographer at a music performance, I carry several serious Canon bodies and a 70-200 2-8 L IS with a 1.4X or 2x tele-extender. Usually I use a sound-proofing Blimp case. Again, that would be noticed "in a Hollywood second" for anyone, supposedly, sitting and listening, not moving around even "slightly" to take pictures! For the entire orchestra in a salon setting, I use the silent 50mm GXR or the GR, both beautifully efficient Ricoh cameras. For low light of the Hollywood Bowl at night, these cameras are simply not players for getting pictures of the soloists from a seat that doesn't require one to sacrifice wine and restaurants for 3 months!One simply can't get close enough for a low pixel count 50mm focal length to be effective.

Here, a pro DSLR and a large white L lens would have been impossible, as they search all ticket-holders to the concerts, LOL!!

So let me first comment on the use of the A7r camera. To take pictures of the musicians, the 55mm lens is too short a focal length, but it works to get the entire stage. But given the 36.4MP of the Sony A7R, one can get nice memento pictures of the soloist playing, (when the orchestra is loud enough to hide the shutter sound) or when the conductor and soloist take their bows.

One needs at least a 200 mm lens and with the Sony A7r that's doable. I imagine one could hide the Sony70-200, f 4.0 lens in one's pants, LOL if one isn't the official photographer for the event! Since it's a white lens, I'm not sure what the "half-life" for continued presence in one's seat, if one raise it to take a picture.

Probably, for individual "portrait" quality pictures of the soloist, one would do better shooting from one's paid for seat, with a Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera.


BandH_736369.jpg


Photograph B&H: Panasonic Lumix G Vario 100-300mm F/4.0-5.6 OIS Lens

At 2.89 x 4.96" (7.34 x 12.60 cm), it's not small, but beats having a white Canon L lens to attract attention!


I'd choose the Panasonic Lumix G Vario 100-300mm F/4.0-5.6 OIS Lens, (to the 35mm form factor), of 600mm. The hood needs to be carried separately or for sure someone would be convinced that the entire official image library, for that day would be rendered compromised by such a major optic!!! My 55 mm Zeiss lens, 2" shorter, but with it's large petal-endowed hood, already caused my enough grief!

For such circumstances, it's perfect - small, black and a with the reach of the Mossad, LOL! So that's a lesson for me. I need stealthy long distance framing and it looks like this lens is tone great answer, short of getting authorized in advance! :)

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
What a fantastic image Asher ! :)

Allow me to show my ignorance on this matter: how did you use 40 to 70 pictures if the image produced is just from one moment and one moment alone ?

At first sight, I would say that this is one photograph and not a lot of them stitched together.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What a fantastic image Asher ! :)

Allow me to show my ignorance on this matter: how did you use 40 to 70 pictures if the image produced is just from one moment and one moment alone ?

At first sight, I would say that this is one photograph and not a lot of them stitched together.

Antonio,

One visitor at last!!!

But, one of my favorites, I must admit! :)

I'm delighted you noticed this picture, as I love it and devoted a good deal of thought to building it from so many seemingly hopelessly unrelated fragments of an entire superwide and ever changing firework extravaganza!

The fireworks come in salvos to go with the beat of the music the orchestra is playing. So that's the reason, Antonio, that one has to "collect moments" from sequential time periods and from all over the scene as different things are happening with a host of assorted firework effects. Sometimes rockets, some sparkling showers, some giving off a lot of colored smoke. The challenge is to keep the front of the lens stationary, while swinging it around an imaginary entrance pupil so that all the images could be stitched as if they were from one very wide angle lens, approaching a capture angle of 200 degrees or so.

Then when the images are stitched, one has to end up with a file with all the layers in the right position and distortion correction, but one has to start over, deciding what should be in the sky and the stage. So essentially, it has to be done by masking each layer to allow just enough of that image to show through in the sky and blend seamlessly with whatever other fragments of images I've deemed worth showing.

So that in a nutshell, is how I didi it.

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
I am sure that this is a great performance to assist ! Quite pleasant and spectacular !
But don't the fireworks make noise as they go up in the sky ?
What about the remains of the fireworks at the end ? Don't they fall on the... ground ? Behind the orchestra ? No winds to make them travel and fall over the spectators ?
I am sure there is a great need of security around the area because of the fires it may cause regarding the serious drought California is dipped in now that climate changes are more and more obvious...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am sure that this is a great performance to assist ! Quite pleasant and spectacular !
But don't the fireworks make noise as they go up in the sky ?
What about the remains of the fireworks at the end ? Don't they fall on the... ground ? Behind the orchestra ? No winds to make them travel and fall over the spectators ?
I am sure there is a great need of security around the area because of the fires it may cause regarding the serious drought California is dipped in now that climate changes are more and more obvious...

Antonio,

The Hollywood Bowl has one of the most acoustically advanced sound system. All the massive speakers for this entire natural valley have projections tuned over the bowl and up the sides. So the sound from the stage through the air and that delivered in the speakers is amplified and not distorted. The fireworks are on the roof and behind the 4 story round "shell" stage. Fireworks are under the control of the City of Los Angeles fire marshal and they have strict requirements for safety and trajectories and type and quality of devices used. The fireworks are for music for which fireworks were either intended in the composition when written, (or can be added without a problem) and they are in the finale when the orchestra cannot be overwhelmed by any force known to man, LOL!

After the interval in the program, security cordons off the entire rear, "fallout-area" behind the stage. This is something done according to protocol, just like a launch of a space ship, LOL! Trust me, they are super-cautious and don't want to hurt anyone, cause a fire or have to pay a dime of compensation to anyone!

Examples are Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Copeland's, Appalachian Spring and this last weekend, which I unfortunately missed, The Simpsons! Check it out! :)

Asher
 
I sort of ignored this thread because I thought it was more of a discussion about the capabilities of the mirrorless A7r and avoid talking gear as I am truly not a gearhead.

Now for the picture. It's fantastic and surely quite an endeavor to put together all the slices. and without knowing what was playing my first impression was that it could have been Holst's - MARS (from the Planets) which I think is very much a fireworks type of music.

Maggie

Too bad it was too far away to actually see your Simone (although you perhaps can in your original full-size file).
 
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