last night we went to see apocalyptica at the roxy theatre. i've been wanting to see this band live, the venue is small, and the venue allows cameras. this was a great combination! in fact, partly why i got a dslr was to take better concert photos and one of the places i imagined practicing was the roxy. needless to say, i went crazy. since i have the kit lens, it's not that great but i was able to get much more quality shots and longer battery life than my old cheap point and shoot. i didn't use flash at all, unlike the others in the audience, hehehe. many shots were not ideal, out of focus or blurry due to the heavy amount of headbanging, but i was able to get a handful of frameable shots which i'm very pleased about. all in all, i took about 1300 shots there, deleted in camera at home a lot of the messed up ones, and then further inspected them on the computer and deleted mistakes or shots for which i didn't like the composition or had a much better version. i ended up with less than 600 keepers. that's about 45% decent shots. i want to improve that percentage. i did experiment with color and b&w. on the spot i felt like the b&w shots had better focus. for awhile i had it completely manual but didn't feel like i could get anything in focus that way--perhaps too much movement on stage. when the band was still (sitting down), they were too far away with low lighting to get a good shot. as for the music, it was good but i only own one album and am not a fan of metallica so i could only name a few songs. the sepultura songs were awesome of course! i wasn't into the guest singer.

here's my best/favorite shots of the band:

the four cellos

the dueling cellos

looking at camera

a quieter moment

thank you and good night

blurry but gives you a sense of the headbanging

you can almost feel the hair whipping

cello metal

antero manninen helping out

eicca toppinen smiling

perttu kivilaakso

paavo lötjönen