High School Talent show shots

Tee Why

Helped out a friend with some shots.
Here are my fav's
1. I saw this shot walking in and took it right from my hip as she was
getting ready to go on stage. Unfortunately, the ISO was at 400 so
the shutter speed was 0.6 sec's so it's blurry. Oh well.


2. Cello player with a stage lighting.


3. Indian dancers.


4. Saxophone dude.


5. Piano/violin duo.

Chrissiebeez_NL

the first shot (who cares about blur? ) and the sax dude have some real tension in them! great shots!

i know how hard it can be with such bad lighting so thumb for the technical aspect of the other shots as well but they dont have the same energy.

jeffreaux2

Excellent...ALL!!!

Especially #2


Great job!

urbanaries

These are ALL fantastic!! wow!

I love #1....don't admit that blur wasn't on purpose, it looks like a very succesful "creative decision!" Gorgeous, love the tension, the drama, the story in the foreground and the background.

Designsmith

Great shots! Would you share some additional technical data i.e. lens, WB, filters, etc. Thanks.

Tee Why

Designsmith wrote:

Great shots! Would you share some additional technical data i.e. lens, WB, filters, etc. Thanks.

Hey thanks. I used a Sigma 10-20 for the first shot but seeing how dark it was, switched to a Sigma 20mm f1.8, Canon 50mm f1.8, and Canon 135mm f2L. AWB in RAW, mostly in manual I think mostly ISO 800 to keep noise low. No filters.

Used Canon's DPP and some stuff in photoshop elements.

Designsmith

Thanks for the info.

I’m curious how you managed to get so close on some of the shots without disturbing the performers. I’m always concerned about distracting them. If you have some methods that would help me I’d appreciate some pointers.

Hary

nice series. please tell me how do you expose for such a situation ? what shutter speed is enough ? do the spot light provide wnough light (I never shot in a theater/dark sceene)

Thanks, Great Work !

Tee Why

Well,
As for how to get close, I shot with a member here Seefutlung, to help him out and this was a practice session. So they don't mind if we walk around the stage a bit. Initially, I was at the front or side of the stage but slowly got closer through out the show. That way the kids get used to me vs. just jumping in front of the kids from the beginning. If a band was setting up, I'd stand behind them as they set up so they were already used to me being nearby. But no real formula, it's just a gut feeling on when and how to get close to the subject.

In a diverse lighting situation like this, you almost always have to use manual. Spot lighting on the face/subject has a similar level of luminosity so once you set up the exposure settings to what you think you need, you just have to chimp at the histogram to make sure and go from there.

Most of the time, b/c it's so dark, I used M mode. If you use other modes, the camera will try to expose for the dark theater and you'll get ridiculously long shutter speeds. The trick is to guage the exposure for the light that will hit the subject, so for the second shot, I remember shooting in Av mode, shooting near wide open to f2, taking a partial metering mode off the bright spot on the ground from the spot light and refocusing and recomposing on the face.

Most other ones, I used Manual. I think I stayed around ISO 800 aperture about f2-3 's or so to keep the image relatively sharp but shutter speed fast enough. I check the histogram to make sure that the light faces have a histogram that is somwhere in the middle. Most of the histogram will be in the left and look like a typically underexposed shot that that's normal since most of the shot should be black. Generally for a non moving subject 1/30 or so is fast enough with a wide, but with a long lens, I stayed at about 1/60-1/200. If they are moivig, you can eithe suck it up and increase ISO to freeze motion and deal with the noise or go with a slow shutter speeed and pan to show motion at a lower ISO and get less noise.

Designsmith

Thanks for the input. I'll keep you tips in mind.