italien

Ash Code is a Dark Wave band from Italy, actually form Napoli. They were playing here in March, opening for French band Corpus Delicti. I could not resit to go back to concert shooting after a very long hiatus.

I wasn’t sure how much gear the venue would allow me to bring in, so I settled for one lens one body set. Namely the LeicaM6 classic and the summicron 50mm v5. My favourite provider had no more Kodak TMZ 3200 so I bought two rolls of Ilford 3200 for the whole show.

The venue is 229 at 229 Great Portland and the evening organized by Reptile. I had no problem checking the camera in. I had set the body to 6400 ISO, but I will come back to this later.

The concert was great. Ash Code, produces some dancy tunes, not very remote to what Sisters of Mercy would have done, with a bit more synthwave side. Maybe a better comparison could be found in the direction off some 80’s belgian bands , remote cousins of Neon Judgement or Parade Ground.

They deliver a pretty good show, Alessandro and Claudia taking turns to the mic. Although I am pretty new to their music, that was a very enjoyable.

The scene was quite dark with a lot of back light, so not super ideal, but access to the front of the stage was super easy. I shot a concert of a friends band with the same set-up a few years back and I realised that the only good shots are those where there are both dark areas and highlighted ones, there is not point shooting a scene without contrast, whatever the ISO.

I also had a discussion with a pro about the value of metering : because most of the scene is in the dark, your meter will be fooled and try to over expose. So having shot the rolls at 6400 ISO I had them processed at box speed, actually pulling the film or compensating by -1 stop ( there is no compensation setting on the M6 ). I think that was a wise choice. Because most of the shots were taken at 1/125 f.2 or f2.8, I have a fantasy of setting the speed and aperture once for all and not to bother, but I was told otherwise.