Oasis Music Festival Suzhou 2025

 

 

First day of a new festival and luckily the first day was a university music competition so I had no real pressure to deliver any images for publication, giving me an opportunity to try something new. So I left my Nikon’s at the hotel and took my Leica kit with me to the festival. There are many old school music photographers that produced some great work with their film Leica’s so I wanted to see what it was like shooting with a rangefinder and the Leica Q2M.

 

 

The biggest issue with the rangefinder system and music festivals in China would be the focal length. 135mm is just too short, and you don’t have enough reach. Luckily, I have an unlimited pass, so I can go on stage to shoot; otherwise, I would not have gotten many shots. But I will say that shooting the 135 without the EVF at a show would be impossible.

 

 

But the start of the pre-show was hampered with rain and cold weather. Lots and lots of soft drizzle which made it very nerve racking as I only took my two Leica’s to the show. I don’t think that the Leica M10 or the Leica Q2M are water or weather resistant, but they where the only cameras that I had on me, so I went to work, crossed my fingers and hoped that these two expensive machines could handle some bad weather.

 

 

 

No one was enthused to be standing in the rain, but most of the crowd was university students, coming to support their university band that was playing in the small music competition. As for shooting with the Leica M, I only used the 135mm lens as I need the reach, but I did shoot a lot with the Leica Q2M, especially the crowd shots.

 

 

 

 

The Leica Q2M worked amazingly well and its high ISO ability was simply unmatched. But the fact that it only has a 28mm lens did make it very restricting as there were no many opportunities to use the camera on the actually performers, while I was in the pit. I could only use the camera while on stage.

 

 

 

Manually focusing the Leica M for hours was extremely difficult, and to be perfectly honest, my hit rate was not that high. There are many shots that I liked but once I took at look at them on my computer, they where soft.

 

 

 

 

 

The next issue that I had with shooting the Leica M10 was the fact the I was mostly using the Leica Tele-Elmar 135mm F4, which is extremely slow in the world of music photography, so trying to keep a fast shutter speed with an F4 lens is not easy. Surprisingly, the Leica M10 is not bad at ISO 6400 but I would drop the ISO and shutter speed when possible, as I was worried about noise.

 

Using the Leica Q2 on stage was awesome, but this is cropped in to get closer to the artist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still a slight crop on this image but I did get closer to the artist by hiding behind some of the amps on stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was at this point of the day, where the biggest issue with shooting the Leica M10 came up. Battery life. I only have two batteries for the Leica M10 and I had issued them up before the last few bands were due to go on stage. If I was being paid for the student gig, I would be completely SOL. Luckily it was only a day for fun and testing I tried to nurse the Leica M10, but swapping out the two batteries and only using the rangefinder. My hit rate went into the gutter now, as I was completely exhausted and the rangefinder system is just not very accurate with the 135mm lens, especially on moving targets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of the shots are particular good, if an assistant had handing in work of this quality to me, I would not have been happy. But this was a day of play and experimentation for me. I have always wondered what a Leica would be like at a music festival. My respect to the old school shooters who shot complete multi-day festivals on a couple of Leica cameras has increased tremendously. The consistent mental effort of focusing manually all the time was exhausting. At the end of the day, I was more mentally exhausted than I have been in years. I was a literal zombie, walking back to my hotel in the evening.

 

 

Shooting these two expensive cameras did worry me. I don’t think any of them were meant for heavy work in consistent rain. Most of the Chinese shooters had wrapped up there cameras(Sony shooters, and their cameras are well know to stop working in rain) so I am retired my Leica’s and taking my Nikon’s back to the festival. The official day 1 of the show is my paid gig, so I can have problems like I did yesterday.

 

 

 

Out with my favorite camera the Leica M10 and in with the beast. My most reliable camera of all time.

 

Official Day 1

Coming as soon as I have shot it.