Norman Rockwell… Rocks Well

Norman Rockwell performing at The State Theater. April 21, 2012.

Last night I had the pleasure of covering Norman Rockwell‘s show at The State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia. One of the finest bands local to the Washington, D.C. area, the headliners were joined by fellow local acts The Independent and Mokey Doris.

Mokey Doris performing at The State Theater. April 21, 2012.

If you haven’t made it to a Norman Rockwell show yet… you really should.

Click here for an epic gallery of Norman Rockwell from the show.

I shot the show with my Canon 5D Mark II. While many photographers prefer something like the Canon 7D for its superior auto-focus and greater frames per second, I decided to go with the 5DII for its superior ISO performance and image quality (see below).

Norman Rockwell performing at The State Theater. April 21, 2012.

The entire show was shot at ISO6400. Though most shows will have stage lights, live show shooting is notorious for low light shooting conditions (unless an outdoor daytime festival) and very few venues/bands will allow photographers to use flash. I shot the show with a Canon 17-40mm f/4L and a Canon 70-200 f/4L. My lens’ relatively narrow maximum aperture was another reason I went with a camera with high ISO performance. As you can see in the image above, the noise at such high ISO shot on the 5DII‘s full frame sensor is almost entirely absent at this size.

Norman Rockwell performing at The State Theater. April 21, 2012.

It was a long, energetic, and sweaty show. Though I came into the show with two fully charged batteries, at the end of the night I was reduced to a camera with just enough juice to review photos with the band. I highly encourage all photographers to buy their camera’s corresponding battery grip. I use the official Canon grips (Canon BG-E6 for the 5DII and BG-E7 for the 7D… very important you order the right one! Thankfully they use the same battery.). Not only do battery grips allow you much more peace of mind when it comes to battery life, redundant controls on the grip itself make it incredibly easy to shoot in portrait mode.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos as much as I enjoyed the show! Don’t forget to visit Norman Rockwell’s website and Facebook. If you haven’t yet, you should probably give my Facebook page a “Like” as well, yeah? ;]

See you around!

Norman Rockwell performing at The State Theater. April 21, 2012.

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