This weekend was crazy nice. So were the days leading up to it. “Why?” – you might ask. Well, it’s pretty simple really. I got to pretend to be a concert photographer at the Nibe Festival in northern Jutland. – Always planned for the same period as the much more hyped Roskilde festival, the small Nibe festival is such a cozy little festival with the main focus being on danish artists, and then spiced with some international names.
Last year I was asked by my good friend Rasmus, if I wanted to join the Fototeam, and cover the event as part of the Festivals internal press corps. Back then I had the prototype of the XT2 for testing (You can view those images in my review here). That was the first time I got to do some concert photography as part of a team, instead of as a paying concert guest. But apparently they liked what I achieved so I was asked if I wanted to come back for the 2017 festival. I had no hesitation. It was one of those: “HELL YES” kind of moments. I had met so many great new friends in the Photo team, so getting the chance to come back and share 5 days of photographic bliss with some fantastic people was really a no-brainer.
So, this year I was an experienced driver (riiiiiight!! 😀 ) – This of course meant that I was more relaxed with the whole thing. I had faith that this was going to work out just fine.
I brought my XT2 with the 50-140mm f/2.8, my X-Pro2 with the 10-24mm f/4 – some different primes, and lastly I brought the GFX with the GF63mm f/2.8 and my brand new vintage Mamiya 645 Sekor-C 80mm f/1.9 lens – The fastest medium format lens ever made.
The plan was to use the GFX as part of making the crowd images, while using the faster focusing X-series cameras for the stage action. But hey, whaddayouknow – The GFX worked just fine at concerts as well! – I didn’t use it that much, but not because of its focusing shortcomings, but simply because the 63mm (50mm full frame eq) renders pretty uninteresting stage shots. It’s neither close enough, neither wide-angle enough.
The experience of shooting the X-series at the concerts was amazing. The XT2 is so crazy cool for this type of job. Small, capable, incredibly fast and just generally awesome to work with. The X-Pro2 was the same with one exception – I kept turning the exposure dial by accident which was quite annoying. Other than that, it was amazing.
I really showed me how far Fujifilm has come with their cameras for this sort of thing. It really have evolved into a professional system that can be used as tools-of-the-trade for any working photographer.
So, here are some of my shots from the festival. – I’m going on vacation to Italy in a few days. I’ll see you all on the flip side!
Nibe Festival 2017 as seen through my lens. Click for gallery 🙂
Awesome shots Jonas!
Waouh … Great pictures !!! Have a nice holiday.
Excellent quality, light and raw emotion in these images. Beautiful work, Sir.
Man. Crush.
Nailed it! Must be a challenge to pull it shots like this of moving subjects in wildly changing lighting. Bravo.
Great Shots ,as always, dude
You should send this link to David Gilmore’s agent and ask if you can shoot him. Given the quality of these shots you would surely be considered! That would prove to be a still greater treat for us all!
Hello Jonas,
A purely Fuji X photographer here sending you well wishes from almost the other side of the world – Australia. Your imagery, transparency of process and advice/suggestions are very beautiful and detailed. I love visiting your blog and IG. They make me feel connected to photography is a way that I touched when I first discovered the beauty of being outside and just making the image. I’m very keen to know more about your experience with manual lenses on the GFX i’m about 90% sure of purchasing one and thinking to get the fuji G mount zoom then to pad out the other focal lengths with manual primes. Currently I shoot all commercial and personal work on the XT2 with a suite of primes.
Thank you again.
Kindly,
Max
Wow, what a great work!
Love the Colors!
Cheers from Austria,
Torsten
Really nice pics!
/Cheers from Sweden, André Fahlström Photography
Hello Jonas! What is the name of your style? Is this minimalism?
How did you find the mamiya 80mm 1.9 performed? I’m really interested to understand your thoughts on this lens coupled with the gfx and if you’ve got any samples of it.