I was shooting my friend Bihzhu performing live at Bobo, KL and I thought I can share my experience from that night with you guys here. The last time Bihzhu performed to a live audience was two years ago which I also shot, and was reviewing the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV. No thanks to the pandemic and multiple lockdowns in Malaysia, the local musicians have been deprived from the opportunity to perform live on stage, and I am so glad to finally catch Bihzhu live again after all this time. It was a Friday night and I could not have asked for a better evening with awesome music and some shutter clicking action.
I also recorded some of the songs Bihzhu performed live and compiled into a vlog, updated on my second channel, you can find the vlog here (click).
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| Check out BIHZHU and her music Spotify, YouTube, Instagram |
For this particular shoot, I brought along my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and an assortment of M.Zuiko lenses, mostly primes - 12mm F2, 17mm F1.8, 45mm F1.8 and 75mm F1.8. The 12mm F2 and 17mm F1.8 were used for environmental shots, recording wide shots of the audience and establishing location. Most of the close up stage shots of the performers were shot with 45mm F1.8 and 75mm F1.8, and I used mostly 75mm F1.8 for tight shots of Bihzhu singing on stage. It was a blessing to work with really compact and light lenses, and I did not feel any strain on any parts of my body moving around and getting my shots. The stage light this time was bright enough that high ISO was not needed, I shot everything below ISO1600, which was not an issue for modern day Micro Four Thirds system.
I recorded several songs with the E-M1 Mark II, and I have included three of them in my vlog video (click here). For video recording I was shooting with the 45mm F1.8, relied on the camera's C-AF full time to track the face of Bihzhu and it worked beautifully. I shot in flat profile (decided not to use OM-LOG400 to keep things simple) and managed to color grade my images effectively, correcting the severe color cast from stage LED lights (strong purple and blue) to have more natural looking skin colors. Everything was shot hand-held and the 5-Axis Image Stabilization worked well to keep steady and professional looking footage. Audio was recorded separately with an Olympus voice recorder LS-12, and synced in post-editing. I thought the 4K footage came out excellent, at ISO800 and under unfavorable stage light color cast.
I am sharing some shots from the series delivered to Bihzhu here. I was just thankful I can enjoy live music again, an amazing one by my friend Bihzhu and having the opportunity to work the camera!
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