There are two routes to the Stone Mountain Arts Center for us: Route 153 through Eaton, NH (by our friends Tim and Bobby at the Inn at Crystal Lake) or take Route 160 past Kezar Falls, ME. For this trip we chose the latter and having a bit of spare time and an almost interesting sky we stopped in Kezar Falls to see if the aforementioned falls were being photogenic. Not really, but the building right next to the hydro station had its share of character.
The full set of photographs of the show are available at [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com[/url]. A number of videos were also shot, and I hope they will start to trickle out as I get approvals/permission.
Stone Mountain LIVE’s special guests were Cheryl Wheeler and Kenny White. Cheryl is a powerful songwriter, but Kenny simply wowed everyone (his song “My Recurring Dream” brought the house to it’s feet). We purchased their respective CDs and listened to them on the way home.
Technical drivel after the photos….
Within the constraints of being as unobtrusive as possible, I try to build on what I learned from the previous show to make the next shoot even better. I shot video with the Canon 5D Mark 2 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a tripod and the Libec H38 fluid head. Because of the dinner layout I was again at the back of the room, so for the second set I tossed on the 1.4X teleconverter. With the new HoodLoupe (see the earlier article on that little gizmo) I found it much easier to do the critical focusing tasks (even though I still managed to muck a few of them up… practice, practice, practice).
I recorded audio in both the camera and with an Edirol R-09 sitting on the shelf next to me. Since I was along the wall the stereo imaging of the recording leaves a lot to be desired. I also really need to move it AWAY from where I am because I was shooting stills with the 1D Mark 2 during the videos and the shutter release was quite audible because I was only a 2 feet away from the mic. I ballparked the levels for the audio and guessed wrong — they were set a little too high and when the music got loud it was clipping I’m sure the little clipping light was flashing madly, but it is on the FRONT of the recorder which is facing AWAY from me when recording so I didn’t notice and, frankly, there wasn’t an easy way to check. That might be an advantage of the Zoom H4 — I think you can reposition the built-in mics. Keeping the mic away from the video camera is a good idea too — there’s plenty of little noises like the stabilizer and shutter flaps. I’m working my way up to getting a feed from the mixing board.
I fed the separately recorded audio into GarageBand, tossed some compression and EQ on it, and it sounds pretty decent (except, of course, for the clipping) — far better than the AGC audio from the 5D’s built-in microphone.
In the “you can never have too much storage” department – I purchased a 16GB card for the 5D and chewed through it in the first set. The fallback was a set of 4GB cards which had the annoying habit of filling up in the middle of a song… Sigh!
