I recently got myself a Canon 600d in order to take my filming and photography ambitions to the next level. The first outing was to get some good footage of my gig at Shambala Festival, but ive also been looking at filming events, and this weekend was my first commission with the new camera.

Although this is my first DSLR i have quite a bit of experience from the years of filming and editing my own events and seem to have developed a keen eye for capturing good footage. I did a lot of research on the net to find the best equipment and while i’ll be paying it off for a good while i’m really pleased with the results.

Tom from The Electric Swing Circus, Stage Bus and Alternative Dubstep Orchestra got in touch with me around 6 months ago to ask if i’d like to write and perform the electronic side of the band. Having just left Slamboree to focus on my own musicial projects i couldnt get involved at the time, so i was real nice to see this debut gig from start to finish from behind the camera.

Tom wanted to produce two films, one for the band and one for the night itself (Hot Club de Swing), so i made sure i got as much of the night as possible. Arriving at the start with my tripod, 5 batteries and two lenses i started straight away and worked through, switching the lenses for different angles and effect, and making sure i capture good footage of everyone involved.

The 50 ml prime lense is a great buy for this kind of shoot as its really fast so the pictures are real sharp in lowlight. I would really like a few different focal lengths as i need to switch to my kit lense for other shots. This is fine for lit up shots, but obviously not as sharp as the prime with its higher fstop for the lower light stuff.

When the band started their set, i moved closer to the stage every 10 minutes or so in order to get all the angles i could with the prime, and switching to the kit for variations on the wide angle, and close ups.

As it was all shot in hd i went through the footage after grabbed 150 or so still of all the best moments to help Tom find the footage and so he has a selection of images he can use. Somewhat  time consuming process, but turned out well so time well spent. The shots above are a few of those stills from the footage and there a few more on my flickr set here.

All in all it went well for the first shoot and Tom said he was really pleased with both the footage and the stills, and very kindly recommended me to a local band looking for filming so that rounded it all real nicely.

The 2nd outing will be next friday filming the annual Slam event at the Core at the Corby Cube next week which im really looking forward to. If you want any filming, or photography for any event please feel free to get in touch.