Last Friday night, I was at my local pub — the Rose and Crown — listening to the first set of my favourite cover band, Scully and the Crossbones. As I often do, I had my camera with me. I ended up shooting with my 28 mm on the Canon RP, a field of view I enjoy for urban photography and street work because it puts me up close with people, shapes, and stories. But when I revisited those images later, something kept gnawing at me: I wasn’t close enough. Not in proximity to the musicians, not close enough to the moments, the crucial gestures that make a photograph meaningful.
Walking the city with a 28 mm field of view makes me present; it makes my subject unavoidably real. But watching live music is a different kind of presence. You feel the sound before you see it. And so on Friday, I came away thinking two things. One, this would make a great project — Friday Night Lights, where I seriously photograph bar bands. And two, this project to be done right would need reach. It would need subject isolation. I would need to be able to pull those fleeting, emotional moments on stage into an intimate frame.
So today I bought a very used Canon L 135mm F/2 EF, affectionately dubbed the Lord of the Red Rings. Red Ring lenses from Canon are their “L” or Luxury lenses, and this one, by reputation, is the best of the lot. It’s a short-telephoto prime known for its sharpness, contrast, and creamy rendering wide open, and unlike slower zooms, it is perfect for the low light of a pub on Friday night.
Why a 135mm for Live Music?
Concert and live music photographers often stress three points that fit this experiment perfectly:
- Fast aperture is crucial. Stage lighting is unpredictable, dim, and dynamic, so the more light the lens gathers, the better your chances of clean, sharp, expressive captures. A lens at f/2 versus f/2.8 can literally be the difference between a missed moment and a moment captured, as per the Digital Photography School
- Reach translates to emotion. With a long prime like 135 mm, you don’t have to be on top of your subjects — you can isolate the musician’s expression, instrument, sweat, and motion even when the pit isn’t accessible, as per the sigma-imaging.ee
- Prime discipline forces intention. As with using the 28mm field of view for my urban photography, choosing a single longer focal length for this Friday Night Lights turns limitations into creative constraints that fuel ideas, not excuses.
The Reddit threads on concert rigs underline this too: photographers starting at gigs almost always gravitate toward lenses faster than f/2.8, because anything slower struggles with club light. Reddit
The Challenge Ahead
This 135 mm f/2 isn’t a “quiet lens on a noisy night.” It’s a commitment. I am asking this lens to:
- Keep me steady in unpredictable light (wide open at f/2 will give me a razor-thin depth of field)
- Keep me engaged with musicians who breathe and move like kinetic sculptures
- Keep me in step with the music — anticipating moments that unfold fast.
To help with that, I’m already thinking about camera settings that people swear by in concert photography: wide aperture, continuous AF tracking, and shutter speeds geared to freeze motion — 1/200–1/320 s or faster — because even on a dim stage, you want sharp moments, not blur unless it’s purposeful. Sherono Photo
What I’m Taking from This Fieldwork
This isn’t a departure from my urban photography principles — it’s an extension:
- I still want truth in the frame, just in a different context — the felt truth of sound and motion.
- I still want presence, just now from outside my normal reach. I liken it to capturing images of the band from the heart of the crowd rather than from the edge of the stage.
- And I still want a narrative — the story of a night, told one frame at a time, where contrast, gesture, and expression coexist.
This Friday
I’ll be back at the Rose and Crown with a new lens and a goal:
To make photographs that feel like the music felt.
Because ultimately, whether I’m walking the city with a 28 mm lens or standing near the stage with a 135 mm lens, what I’m always after is catching that decisive moment.