Photo pass is a different night. If I am credentialed I bring a real body and a lens that comes off. This is not that article.
This is the night you bought a ticket like everybody else. General admission. Security at Stubb's, Emo's, Bayou Music Center, South Side — most rooms in Texas will bounce a camera with a removable lens. Some will bounce anything that looks like you came to film a documentary. Phones are fine until the light dies and you want a picture that is not a blur of a spotlight.
Read the venue. I mean actually read it. "No professional cameras" usually means no interchangeable lens. A point-and-shoot with a lens that does not come off is the loophole they wrote on purpose.
Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III
This is the one I tell people to buy if they ask me in the parking lot. 1-inch sensor. f/1.8-2.8. 24-100mm. Flip screen. It looks like a camera your aunt would own, which is the point. Security has seen a thousand of them. It does dark rooms better than a phone. Spare battery in the pocket because it dies when you are having fun.
Sony ZV-1 II and ZV-1F
Smaller. Gets in the door. The F is cheaper and wider. Good if you want something that disappears in a bag and you are not cropping tight from the back bar. I have seen these walk into rooms that got weird about bigger bodies.
Sony RX100 VII
If you have the money and you want autofocus that actually keeps up when somebody is moving under bad light. Viewfinder if you can deal with looking like you know what you are doing. Still a fixed lens. Still not a DSLR. Still check the door.
Looks too serious
What I would not walk up to GA with: a Fujifilm X100 that looks like a Leica. A Ricoh GR in a quiet room is fine. In a metal-detector line with a guy who has been told "no real cameras," it can still get you the leave-it-in-the-car speech. Looks too much like work. I am not arguing with security. I am trying to get to my spot.
Do not bring a camcorder. Do not bring a GoPro on a stick. Do not look like you are working the show if you are not. Video rules are their own headache. The G7 X shoots 4K. That does not mean you should look like a film set.
Phone is the backup. Always. When they say no cameras at all, the phone is the camera. When the G7 X is in the car because you did not read the email, the phone is the camera. I have filed nights on a phone. I did not love it. I still have the pictures.
Buy it from the company if you can. I do not take a cut.
I am not scoring these. I am telling you what gets past the door and still looks like the room when the lights go blue.
