My Daughter's Dance Competition (56k Warning)
My daughter does competitive dance (jazz, tap, ballet) and her team went to Nationals and won First Place in their age division! I had just purchased the D300 a week before the competition so I was itching to see how it did in this classic low-light scenario. Some pics of her and her friends:
#1 - My daughter
#2 One of her friends in the Hip Hop group
#3 Another friend, dancing to Little Red Riding Hood
PP was white balance and a little Noise Ninja with a little sharpening. I'm still trying to find the best balance of NN settings to use with images out of the D300, but I'm really liking what I see so far. Lens was my workhorse 70-200 VR.
C & C appreciated!
#1 - My daughter
#2 One of her friends in the Hip Hop group
#3 Another friend, dancing to Little Red Riding Hood
PP was white balance and a little Noise Ninja with a little sharpening. I'm still trying to find the best balance of NN settings to use with images out of the D300, but I'm really liking what I see so far. Lens was my workhorse 70-200 VR.
C & C appreciated!
BobCool
www.rfcphotography.com
www.rfcphotography.com
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Did you shoot in RAW?
I shot my daughters dance rehersal with the E-500.
They would not let anyone take pictures or video the night of the dance show.
They had pictures by there photographer & video's for sale.
Take Care,
Chuck
Aperture Focus Photography
http://aperturefocus.com
Hi Chuck,
I wanted to see how the D300 does noise reduction in jpg mode, so this time I didn't shoot in RAW. Next time, however, will be the RAW test with Capture NX2 for noise reduction. I've seen sample of how Capture NX2 does a better job of post noise reduction on NEFs, so I'm going to see for myself.
I've heard of some venues not allowing parents to photograph their children, and I think that's silly. If I'm going to pay that much for costumes, dance fees, travel, etc. then I'm darn well taking pics with my camera. Granted, you and I don't have a P&S so we wouldn't be using flash, and perhaps that's the reason why they didn't allow it. It only takes one overzealous parent to fire up a P&S with a flash to ruin it for everyone. One of my daughter's recent competitions actually took points off of the dance team's score (not our team) when a parent used a flash on their P&S.
www.rfcphotography.com
Stage lighting has to the worst. I have shot several events for a local dance company and always confounded by the lighting. I swear every show they do the lighting gets darker. I ended up shooting the last show at 1600iso with an f2.8l 70-200mm lens and still had major problems.
If you don't already know this, these two words help a lot when shooting stage productions - spot metering. If you know this already and still have problems, you could purchase/rent something like an 85mm 1.8 and just get in the first few rows. You'll have to crop zoom for proper composition, but it could give you better results. The Nikon 85mm is below $400 - I'm sure the Canon is similar in price?
Also, do you shoot RAW? It does help eek out a little more exposure during post. I did that with my D80 - intentionally underexpose to keep the shutter speed high enough (1/500th) and then turn up the exposure in post. Worked pretty good if there weren't too many blown highlights that Lightroom couldn't fix. Hope this helps!
www.rfcphotography.com
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