Aaron Kwok Fu-Shing is a popular Hong Kong singer and film actor. The media refer to Aaron Kwok, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau and Leon Lai as the Cantopop Four Heavenly Kings. He has been dubbed “Hong Kong’s Michael Jackson” for his onstage dancing displays.
He held a series of concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum last month. It was a spectacular concert with amazing stage design and extravagant costumes. Aaron was a very energetic performer on stage and with the constant and rapidly changing stage lighting, it posed quite a challenge for concert photography.
All the pics were shot hand-held with Canon EOS 40D & EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM. The RAW captures were processed and converted with Adobe Lightroom with further processing with Adobe Photoshop CS3.
The World According to Roland 
some of the best concert photos EVER! great pictures
WOW+WOWOW+WOOOOWWWWWW!!! You are the MASTER of Concert fotography!! I like this series very very much. It really displayed the always cool Aaron Kwok’s characteristic. Fantastic work!! Thank you for sharing. =D
My fav: mg_8831 and mg_8842 =D
Happy Holidays,
Tony Quan
Wow awsome.
Actually I am about to go out and get a the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L IS USM lens. I don’t really have the budget to shell out for the f/2.8 one. Besides I hear that it is much heavier and produces less sharp pictures than the f/4.0 one.
Do you think these kinds of photos would be possible with such a slow lens? I can see that some of your pics are taken at ISO 1600 so I guess that for the f/4.0 you wouldn’t be able to stop the action atall?
Hi Morten,
Thanks! The Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM is a fine lens no doubt. For brightly lit concert, this lens should work well. However, for dimly lit concert. That extra one stop of light for the f2.8 would certainly help. There are pros & cons for either lenses as you know already, it will be a difficult decision, something only you can decide.
Hi Roland,
I thought you had the 70-200mm f2.8 IS this entire time I started looking at your mind-blowing concert photos. Been a long while since I stopped by, been very busy with my own blog and keeping my clients happy.
Having shot many stage performances over the years, depending on your luck, those stage lights can help or destroy your images. By help I mean there’s plenty of light casting on the subjects, sometimes too much but there’s enough light generally even for an F4 tele to cope. By bad, some of the stage I’ve shot had horribly managed light that were so bright that highlights are blown.
However, having an f2.8 lens give you that extra edge although I find myself seriously craving the tele prime f2.0. Just cannot get enough even at ISO 1600 which I find myself shooting mostly for low light event venues. I dream about an affordable 1.8 tele-photo lens every day!