Theater shoot
Sorry to link instead of embed, but it was a request from the company (and I was asked not to share at all until after opening... which was last night. It's been killing me to wait all week to get some feedback on these!!)
Gallery here
My daughter is involved in a production so I took the opportunity to grab some shots at the piano-dress rehearsal. Lighting wasn't finished yet so there were some hotspots and deadspots onstage (subsequently fixed, but I only got the chance to shoot at this one rehearsal). At least it's decent professional lighting instead of "school cafetorium" or "cave", which has been my prior experience! :rofl
I'd love feeback. My biggest frustration is the usual problem of needing to shoot wide open and high ISO in the theater (oh, for a 5d MkII! Someday...
). I kept them mostly to ISO 400 which is where the xsi seems happiest in low light (800 and 1600 are ok IF you know you can expose to the right, but that's always tricky in changing theatrical lighting it seems to me... unless I'm just not nailing my exposures well enough yet!). I didn't have my tripod (duh), and so these were handheld using the 100 f2, often wide open.
In any case, C&C would be really appreciated! I personally think the technically better shots are from #30 onwards (despite the "night" lighting for the scene), but there are a few ok ones earlier in the gallery. ALL comments would be really appreciated, but in particular how does sharpness/noise come across to others?
Thanks!
Gallery here
My daughter is involved in a production so I took the opportunity to grab some shots at the piano-dress rehearsal. Lighting wasn't finished yet so there were some hotspots and deadspots onstage (subsequently fixed, but I only got the chance to shoot at this one rehearsal). At least it's decent professional lighting instead of "school cafetorium" or "cave", which has been my prior experience! :rofl
I'd love feeback. My biggest frustration is the usual problem of needing to shoot wide open and high ISO in the theater (oh, for a 5d MkII! Someday...
). I kept them mostly to ISO 400 which is where the xsi seems happiest in low light (800 and 1600 are ok IF you know you can expose to the right, but that's always tricky in changing theatrical lighting it seems to me... unless I'm just not nailing my exposures well enough yet!). I didn't have my tripod (duh), and so these were handheld using the 100 f2, often wide open.In any case, C&C would be really appreciated! I personally think the technically better shots are from #30 onwards (despite the "night" lighting for the scene), but there are a few ok ones earlier in the gallery. ALL comments would be really appreciated, but in particular how does sharpness/noise come across to others?
Thanks!
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Comments
Great job!
Caroline
P.S. Your daughter looks so cute!
Theatre lighting is a challenge, especially when you only have one chance to get it right and try to notice and capture the critical moments too. For my part, there's a big difference in image quality when I have one chance to shoot a show I've never seen vs. the shows that let me shoot throughout Tech Week and make notes on exposure, framing, action details, et cetera.
You've made some very good images under tough conditions -- great job.
On high-resolution crop cameras like the XSi, noise is very noticeable at 100%. However, if you're printing at 8x10 sizes or viewing at the size of a Web image or desktop wallpaper, the noise tends to disappear as you downsample the file. Noise reduction software also works wonders as long as the image isn't grossly underexposed to begin with. Actually, noise doesn't show up all that much in a properly exposed image at high ISO.
Motion blur, on the other hand, does show clearly in several of these images. I think you did a great job handholding at that speed, but 1/125s isn't fast enough to stop dance action, or even a hand gesture in a musical number.
In a future show, I'd suggest bumping up your ISO and taking advantage of the faster shutter speed it will buy you. ISO 1600 -- just try it sometime, make a few prints, and I think you'll be happy with the results.
A rollicking band of pirates we!!!!:dragon :dragon :dragon
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Bwahaha... indeed!! Do you have a cat-like tread as well?
Momwac, thank you so much for those VERY helpful comments. While I didn't sit through tech week for this show, I have the advantage of spending a lot of time in the theater on the OTHER side of the lens (onstage
This was, however, the first time I was able to shoot a show with decent LIGHT - previous attempts have been elementary school productions and/or other situations where the lighting was just dire, and at that point I didn't have the fast glass. Consequently I'm still experimenting somewhat to figure out what settings yield what results in practice rather than merely in theory. I chose to shoot shutter priority, picked 1/125 as the slowest I could realistically handhold, and see what happened.....
I certainly agree about some of the motion-blurred gestures, although I don't occasionally mind a little bit of that in hands, or skirts moving etc to create a sense of movement in the shot. That said, it would be better to have there by design instead of by accident.....
In any case, BIG thanks - the feedback is SO helpful!!!!
This company makes a point of nurturing younger artists, so there were a couple of kids and several teenagers involved, with each age group semi-mentoring the one below them. She's had a wonderful time (even though she hates me having to set her hair into ringlets for each show - this was the piano dress before we started doing her hair, but since then it's been curl-o-rama. I've FINALLY persuaded her to let me do it with hot rollers from now on which is soooo much quicker and easier - she rejected that the first times out, but having now seen how long it takes when I use a curling iron, and then discovered the misery of wet-setting it on the next attempt, she has finally seen the light and hot rollers it is... :whew)
14-24 24-70 70-200mm (vr2)
85 and 50 1.4
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^^^ x2
I did see some rabbits but had to stop surfing. It's time to cull.
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Strictly entre nous in many ways this was some of the least stressful shooting I've done - somebody else has done all the hard work of directing and lighting - all I needed to do was push buttons at the right time
As for quantity ... I set this up as a gallery for the cast, which is why it may seem there are a lot of duplicates. What would y'all think would be an optimum number if I were presenting the gallery photographically rather than as production shots for the performers?
Thanks again for the very sweet comments!