Sidewalk Hustle x Nokia at Austin City Limits Music Festival 2013 (Wrap Up)

This past weekend we headed down to Texas for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, a massive multi-day, and multi-weekend weekend musical event. The festival featured over 180 bands spread across 8 stages catering to over 75,000 eager music lovers in Austin’s Zilker park. Running the gambit on musical talent from hip hop star Kendrick Lamar, EDM great Kaskade, Indie rockers The National, Brit sensations Arctic Monkeys, stoner rockers Queens of the Stone Age, and featuring a healthy dose of 80’s Goth rock with The Cure and Depeche Mood. We are not exaggerating when we say there was something for everyone here.

Since we are music festival veterans, we thought this time we would try something a little different, and that’s where Nokia comes into play. After attending a sneak preview of the new Nokia Lumia 102o, we had the chance to meet and talk to a National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez who recently took the Nokia Lumia 1020 across thousands of miles of the American West. As a professional photographer he replaced his normal DSLR camera with the new Windows smartphone which utilizes an unprecedented 41 mega pixel camera with image stabilization and 3x digital zoom, ISO settings between 100 and 4000, with shutter speeds between 1/16,000 of a second to 4 seconds. Alavarez managed to captured some unbelievable images of American landscape all on a camera on a cellphone (we highly recommend you do yourself a favour and take a look at his work here). After speaking with Alvarez and seeing his work we didn’t fully believe that a smartphone camera could actually be this good, so WE decide to give it a whirl ourselves and replace our DSLR with the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Now we know it sounds crazy replacing a DSLR with a smartphone, but we figured why not, change is the spice of life after all. So armed with our canary yellow Nokia Lumia 1020 we ran from stage to stage at ACL snapping pictures of fantastic band after fantastic band. We will admit that at first it took some getting used to, but the learning curve was quick and intuitive and boy did that 41 mega pixel camera prove to be useful. Some of the things we noticed were, that because it is a smartphone, having some sort of surface or mono/tri pod to steady the phone really helped, and that the battery life could use some improvement. Luckily there is a convenient add-on for the Nokia Lumia 1020 that gives the phone an extra battery charge, a camera grip, and a spot for a pod to be attached. This add-on definitely came in handy.

Overall it was an interesting experience, one that did take some time to get our heads around, but once we got going taking pictures on the Nokia Lumia 1020 it actually became second nature. Plus a cell phone is a lot easier to carry around then a big DSLR, you can’t pop a professional camera into your back pocket. It is also a lot easier to sneak a cellphone photo in places you aren’t suppose to. We do highly recommend the Nokia Lumia 1020

Now that you’ve read our experience with the Nokia Lumia 1020, you should know that it comes in black and yellow and is available at Rogers, TELUS and Black’s. Also be sure to stay tuned to Sidewalk Hustle as we will be giving away a brand new Nokia Lumia 1020.

Take a closer look at the Nokia Lumia 1020 below as well as some select pictures taken at the festival. Also be sure to read all our ACL live music wrap ups as all pictures in those posts were taken on the Nokia Lumia 1020, with some minor post-production of course. Enjoy.