Friday, September 30, 2011

Roger Daltrey plays Tommy at the Scotiabank Center in Ottawa – the entire rock opera recorded with the Fuji F550EXR

Yup … I was there on 28 September 2011 and was quite impressed by Daltrey and his superb band … Tommy sounded great!

This is the first installment … I plan on processing the images once I get some time, but meanwhile here is a 1 hour and 9 minute presentation of the entire rock opera minus a 20 second battery change.

I had to record this in stealth mode because I already had the tap on the shoulder from “the man” … so I jammed the camera into my belly and shot through the guard rail, which of course satisfies the Scotiabank Center’s desire to screw up every bit of fun the patrons can have with a camera :-)

If you listen carefully, you’ll even hear a couple of clever additions to the rock opera … I quite like it when he ad libs a bit …

For what it is, I am very pleased with the quality of the video, and especially the sound. I mastered this in a trial version of Sony Vegas Platinum HD and I definitely plan to buy it. What a wonderfully professional piece of software! The audio adjustments alone are worth the price. I also added some slight sharpening and some gamma increase, which opened the shadows more than the Fuji likes to do …

Update: Wow … a few hours later and Time Warner has identified this work as their copyrighted material. I guess I did a pretty decent job of mastering it. But I disputed it immediately because it is obviously not their material unless they have suddenly developed a penchant for recording from the second level of an arena on a compact camera through a guard rail … sheesh …

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