Alexisonfire — Blog — Kylee Thompson Photography

Wow its sure been a while since i’ve written a blog on here. Definitely something i’m going to try and get more consistent at… We’ll see how that goes. So this past week I had the great pleasure to once again have Alexisonfire in front of my camera. The first and only time I had seen these guys before was at Sonic Boom 2015, which I can’t believe was close to 5 years ago already.

This was my first show of the year and boy it wasn’t one to disappoint! Edmonton’s radio station 100.3 The Bear had me out photographing pictures but I decided to do something a little different then I normally do. The normal thing to do is bring your digital cameras to concerts but I decided to switch things up and bring a film camera in as well. My two cameras of choice for this show was my trusty Canon 5D IV and the Canon Elan 7E. For the past few years I’ve wanted to bring a film camera to a show but this time I finally did it, and so happy and excited that I did. This film camera is only about 20 years old so I still had auto focus and the best part is I can use my collection for canon top’s then lenses which I use on my modern DSLR. It might seem like that’s kind of cheating use a film camera with auto focus but I will disagree. It makes it a little easier yes but you still have to know all the setting you have your camera in as you don’t have the instant feed back you do from a digital camera. As well there was a period of 10 or more years these were the cameras that were out. You have auto focus why not use it. During shows like this we get generally the first three songs to photograph and then we get kicked out. So in this time frame I had to make sure I had enough time to take my digital pictures which came first and then shooting my film second. Once I knew I had a good selection on my 5D IV, I started firing off my film. I was only going to shoot off one roll for this concert but I ended having enough time and fired off the two rolls I had with me. My film of choice for this show was Kodak TMAX P3200 and Ilford Delta 3200 Pro.

After getting out of the photo pit I was just on cloud nine getting to shoot my first concert of the year and getting to shoot some film at a concert as well. To be honest I was a little more excited to see what was on the film then I was on my DSLR. Since both of these rolls of film were black and white they can’t be done at a regular that hurts it around in a few days. They would have had to get sent out of town and it would have been about 2-3 weeks before I got them back so I decided to try my hand and develop them myself at home (Go Me!). For an early birthday gift to myself I picked up an Ilford Simplicity & Paterson Film Processing Kit. So easy to use I highly recommend it.

I’m still tossing up which film I like better. The Kodak seems to be a little more contrasty, while the Ilford seems to be a little less noisy but more flat. I think i’m leaning the way for kodak more but i’ll have to get them both a few more uses in scenarios like this better I can make a true judgement call. Here are my photos from that night both digital and my favorites from each roll of film.