Poor Lights, Poor ISO performance...GREAT show!

Bend The Light

My daughter was recently part of a show. I was asked to take some photos as I did last year. The photos are not being paid for, I am doing them as a favour to help out the theatre company. They did give me a free 2 page spread in the programme, though, comprising several of my shots from last year's performance. Programs sold to over 300 people, so that's not bad advertising, eh?
Anyway, I took a lot of shots at the dressed rehearsal. In low/stage light, I have only 2 options for lens: an f2.8 135mm, and a f1.8 50mm, both manual. I use a 400d. With the ISO set at 800, in this light, the shots were still very noisy. Higher ISO makes them almost unusable. I find that red lights make it so difficult...why is that??
So, here are a couple of shots, which I have processed in Topaz. Bear in mind that they will not be used bigger than 8"x10", and mostly will be used on a small monitor as a display in a front office, so no point pixel peeping

Blood Brothers - I coulda been him by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr

Memory - Ballet Sequence by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr

masquerade 5 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr
And one of my daughter (she's 5) singing her solo lines to "Toot Sweets" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She did it in front of 300+ people on Sunday. Very proud of her.

Toot Sweets - Ruby by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr
Thoughts on noise, Topaz, pictures and lights, please.

divamum

Welcome to the wonderful world of theatrical shooting. Challenging at the best of times because of the high contrast light, it always seems to be worse with kids' productions where there often is limited lighting equipment in the venues and/or inexperienced lighting designers/operators. It presents very difficult lighting conditions for photographers!

The lenses you have are fine for the situation (although, from experience, I can tell you that the 50 1.4 is much more reliable in theatre conditions - if you do more of this, you might want to consider trading up.), but fast glass sometimes isn't enough and you just have to push the ISO. It sounds counterintuitive - and believe me, I fought it for quite some time before I realised it really does work! - but the trick (other than buying a high ISO superstar like a 5dII or d700!) is to get a decently exposed shot that doesn't need any lifting of exposure in post. Even if you shoot at a higher ISO, you will actually get LESS visible noise at the higher setting than if you shoot at a lower number and then find you underexposed a bit and have to raise the exposure or brightness in post. You will still need PP NR of course, but I've seen some great shots out of the 40d - it can deliver!

I assume you shot RAW? If not.... next time FOR SURE. You need that extra latitude for WB and exposure in those conditions. Expose for the highlights, but keep your histogram well to the right - as long as you don't blow out the highlights, you can always dial exposure back a little bit when processing (which will also help minimize visible noise).

Red light can indeed be challenging. One of the worst lighting situations I have ever faced was a concert performance where they had ONE light... with a red gel on it. Nightmare! No choice but a lot of post work (or bw conversion).

Of your shots above, I think #3 is the most successful - the focusing is the crispest.

Good luck and have fun with it!

ETA: Why manual focus? I find that even though I miss some shots with AF, it's generally far more reliable than I can manage manually. YMMV.

PS Some of my performance shots can be seen at http://divamum.smugmug.com in the "theatre, concerts and opera" gallery. The Don Giovanni is the one that had ONE red light - it was horrible!!

Bend The Light

Thanks Divamum.
You have pretty much said what I thought...the lighting is quite amateur, that's true. I did shoot RAW and recovered highlights in RAW before exporting to PS. I tried to leave blacks as blacks in most cases, particularly if they were in the background...better to expose for the people than the "scenery", I thought.

Yes, I think the third one is the best of the 4 here (other than the fact that number 4 is my daughter, so is instantly my favourite! )

Sorin

Red lights are a nightmare. It is like seeing everything in infrared. The only thing worse than straight red is when they rotate r/g/b constantly. The blue and Green are much easier to work with individually. Also, manual WB is a necessity. I tent to shoot in "K" (kalvin) mode. I have a D80 so I completely understand the high ISO noise issue. If I go over 800 it is just ugly IMO. That said, the 50 f/1.4 is really a great lens for stage shooting when you can get relatively close. Just try to shoot in all manual settings, do not trust the camera in that setting.

Bend The Light

Thank you, sorin.