Day 15 (1/12) Seeing stars

Spent the morning posting some of these past blog entries. Then the afternoon with my grandfather at the hospital for his test results.


Dinner... takeout. How cool is that?

In the evening I headed out to catch Stars play live at The Wall.

It was a spur of the moment thing, even though I'd actually known about this show weeks in advance, before I even left the States. Back then I didn't know how to get tickets, or if they were even still available (the venue's site is in Chinese), and figured I'd wing it when the time came.

I got a cousin to decipher the website for me, clipped out the address from the newspaper, and I was off. Total cabfare to and from the place came to under $7 US, no tip.

I waited on line from around 6:30pm till doors opened quarter past 8ish. I got all the way to the entrance just to find out that people buying day-of tickets had to wait till after all the ticketholders got in first. That's kinda... what's a politically correct word for 'retarded'? Silly. That's just silly.

I don't see the point in giving entry preference to the people who bought their tickets in advance. My money's just as blue as theirs'. And it was all general admission anyway. I waited on line just like everyone else, and actually was there way before most of the ticketholders. What's the difference? Okay, end rant.

So I waited at the bar while everyone filed in. My scotch and soda order turned into a Jack and soda. And I winded up from my deserved position near the stage to standing with the latecomers, back up against the wall.

Entrance silliness aside, it was really quite a good show. The band is pretty good live, the crowd of 300+ was surprisingly energetic, and The Wall had decent sound. Ticket was $2,000 NT, a little steep but life's short and it was a good time. Admission included a drink too, but they took my ticket stub for the drink, which is... silly.

So I realized early on in the night that my camera wouldn't be taking any decent shots of the show. I took a bunch anyway, hoping I'd wind up with at least a couple halfway acceptable photos, but to no avail. Most of them are awful. These are the best of the worst.
I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong. In fact, I'd love just to know that it is in fact something I'm doing wrong and not the camera itself. I realize I was shooting from a distance, in dim lighting, and without a telephoto lens or particularly stable hands. But there were people taking better--clearer, crisper--photos, on their iPhones. That's just recockulous.

I tried everything I could think of: high ISO, flash and no flash, night scene mode. I've read the manual; I'm usually pretty good about these things. The trouble is only with distant objects in the dark, like the New Year's fireworks display at 101 and the concert tonight.

It's a Nikon (not so) Coolpix S550. Any ideas?