I had a cool opportunity to bring my Nikon 1 V1 to a concert in Denver last night. It seems as though the once draconian rules on image capture during concerts have been relaxed in this age of camera phones. Instead of “no photography or recording devices,” the message now is “no professional cameras.”
Well, the Nikon 1 V1 isn’t exactly a professional camera (it’s the same size as my previous compact, the Nikon P7000). So I brought it. No problem. I used the 30-110mm zoom lens in shutter-priority mode and spot-metering. I wanted to keep the shutter speed above 1/60s at all times. While not every shot was tack-sharp, I got a lot of keepers. And Van Halen still brings it like the best of ’em!
And just for kicks, here’s a video I got with the V1.
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/E-4GRB-zrVQ” title=”Eddie%20Van%20Halen%20guitar%20solo%202012″]
Ah, how times have changed. I’ve been to many concerts, but usually cameras are prohibited items. Not this time, as I was able to bring my Nikon P7000 to a recent show in California. For the most part, I was impressed with what I got, and the manual functions on the P7000 really helped when things got dark.
I took advantage of the high ISO mode (ISO 1600) and used spot metering to avoid drastic overexposure– something that happens a LOT when a point and shoot camera sees a very dark stage and a spot-lit musician. I also liked being able to dial in -EV compensation to keep the background dark. At the end of the night, I got some memories that I could take with me.
