Progressive Metal pioneers Dream Theater perform at The Tabernacle in Atlanta touring in support of their 12th studio album “A Dramatic Turn of Events” with a newfound performance enthusiasm readily apparent with the addition of drummer Mike Mangini.
Photography Notes:
Shooting the progressive rock artist always presents a challenge as the band tours with their own lighting rig which predominantly consists of LED lighting in shades of green and blue…A triple negative. Fortunately the house follow spot provided moments of contrasty illumination of James LaBrie which occasionally caught bandmates. Shooting was limited to the first 15 minutes with exposures falling about 1/250 F2.8 ISO5000.
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Hi Allen,
Interested in understanding more about your negatives views re: LED lighting. After the poor colour choice by the band
is the third negative with LEDs is that you find they offer poor contrast illumination vs normal lighting and therefore cause AF problems? is their light almost too diffuse & soft vs normal harsh spots?
Regards,
David
Hi David -
Yes. LEDs tend to present more of a wash than focused beams and are generally less contrasty as a result. I can’t technically say why, other than that they are cheap and have a lower power draw than more traditional tungsten based lights. My biggest issue with them is with white balance and how it wreaks havoc on camera sensors. LED lighting operates in a very small band of wavelengths to “approximate” white light and other colors by mixing a combination of red, green, and blue LEDs at various intensities. It looks poor to the human eye (which has a brain that can trick us to seeing the desired colors somewhat) and even worse to a camera sensor which is effectively interpreting the same mix of red, blue, and green again to ascertain what color it needs to register on its sensor. If you look at the bottom spotlight in the sixth photo of this set with LaBrie and Petrucci you can clearly see red, blue and green attempting to make ~white light. They make me twitch.
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Great pictures of one of my favorite bands! Love the expression on Mangini’s face in the last picture.
Thank you Jason. They seem to have a newfound live energy with Mangini!
-A