Do you need a fancy camera to shoot concerts?

When I first started shooting concerts, I had a Nikon n80 film camera and the kit lens that it came with.  It didn’t take me too long to realize that the lens I had was inadequate, so I quickly upgraded to the 70-200mm 2.8 lens.  I still have this lens today and love shooting with it.  While they are nice to have, and make things a lot more convenient, you don’t need a fancy dSLR to shoot decent photos.  Take for example, these shots of The All American Rejects.  They were shot with a low-level film camera body.

The All American Rejects. Photo by John Shippee Photography

The real downsides to me for using a film camera was not being able to check a few test shots before hand to ensure that my settings were getting me the best images and the time it took to rewind and change film.  When you only have 3 songs to shoot, you don’t want any time wasted with rewinding/changing film.

The All American Rejects. Photo by John Shippee Photography

A few more photos from this show can be seen on my site, John Shippee Photography.