Music Mogul : Grahame Jull!

My mate Grahame is not only Salisbury's most colourful dresser, but possibly its most prolific in the music business. Musician, DJ, Radio DJ, Producer and many other things (he has a - or at least had - a bearded dragon reptile thing that he had on a piece of string and it followed him around at music festivals!).

Keyboard wizard, drummer and multi percussionist, he also even plays the trombone! Either at open mics where he is happy to add an instrument accompaniment to help out a solo artist or to join in with a group, to managing a number of bands he either fronts, plays in or writes for, produces etc etc. 

"How many (bands) have you got at the moment, then, Grahame?" I asked. 'About twelve', he replied with that big cheeky grin....

I'd been out photographing the avant garde local band 'Carpet', who describe themselves as 'rhythmic bending of time and space' - basically cross Hawkwind with Brian Eno -  interesting and not bad, if that's your kind of thing, though a noisy bare floorboarded pub on a Friday night might not be the best of venues for such rather indulgent music. 

I was testing out my new (to me) Sigma Art DX 30mm f1.4 lens, which replaces my basic and plastic Nikkor DX 35mm f1.8 G. Whilst this Art Sigma does not quite have the lofty reputation as the FX 35mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.4's, after a rather shaky start - focussing at wide apertures is not easy and even if focus is slightly out, it just looks rubbish. 30mm on DX equates to 45mm, a bit wider than the rather too long standard lens that 35mm on DX makes - 52mm - and is actually roughly the view that the eye sees.

A few hours of practice and I soon had it turning better and better results. In the pub, the band (literally) played in darkness. They had a psychedelic sort of colour blobby lightshow - and of course, that had to be seen in the near dark.

So, what better test for me, focussing manually, manual exposure at 1/30 f1.4 iso 2500 or 3200! I literally turned dark into day and got some really (surprisingly) good results that I shall post up on the band's Facebook page. If I'd had been using a still fast f2.8 zoom for such, then I'd be having to use 12,000 odd iso and on my ageing D7000, that's unusable. Expose correctly and don't edit too much and 3200 is just about OK.

So, this shot of Graham was taken as a quick pose with lights from the bar. Not flash. The lights aren't bright, just normal. The focus is spot on. The detail is extraordinary for f1.4 - I can see very clearly all the very slight imperfections on his shave before he came out, yes, every tiny whisker!

And the lens is so much better made than the plastic Nikon, is twice the weight and feels just the right chunkiness on the fairly weighty D7000. Above all, it's a pleasure to use and being in the legendary Art series from Sigma, it will have a long, productive life, for creative open aperture work, band photography and of course, street shots at night.