Taking picutres at school play

Since i am one of the photographers for my school's newspaper, I was asked to do this year's play in November. I have the G6, a tripod, and all of the accessory lenses for it. I'm not sure if i'm allowed to use a flash, so i was wondering if there are any settings i can use to get a good picture w/out using one. Like is there a certain ISO, shutter speed, or aperture setting i should use? I will be using my tripod, so camera shake is not a problem. Any suggestions?

Depends on the available lighting and amount of movement in the play. If your intention is pin sharp pictures low shutter speeds, large aperture sizes and high iso speeds are pretty much the order of the day. If the play is about a dance maybe you can slow down the shutter speed to capture the sense of motion in some of the shots?

I'm kind of an idiot, but I just shot a concert with my G6, and here's what I did:

I got decent photos at ISO 100 and 200 and a tripod when possible. Noise might be a problem at 200, depending on your output size, but you can use a noise-reduction program to clean them up. 400 would give you more options, but it's unuseably noisy in my opinion.

I had best results with the spot metering in P mode, meter a couple of the brightest spots in the scene, choose one that looks good, and press * to lock metering, focus, and shoot. your photos will probably come back a little underexposed, but that's better than washed out highlights, you can usually get them looking good in photoshop. if you meter on something bright, you'll have shorter exposures so you'll also have less chance of camera shake (it happens, even with a tripod) or subject movement. Try to shoot a lot during still bits, it's hard to capture motion.

Make sure your flash and focus assist beam are off, it's totally distracting to the subjects and audience to have blue grids popping up on people's faces. Don't use auto, because the flash will fire.

I agree with the above except I would use Av at 2.0 for the fastest properly exposed shutter speed. If you must use P, half-press to set exposure, then usse program shift to get a better pair of aperture and shutter settings. That's a hassle so use Av.

Yeah, good point, lefturn. The drag is that the lower the aperture, the less depth of field you have, so focusing is important, and you don't have your focus-assist beam, so look for those high-contrast edges to autofocus on, or look into hyperfocal distances and do some math.

ok thanks guys, i have to set a few test runs, sop we'll see how they come out. But when i have this 'gig' i'll post some shots on here for you guys to see. Thanks again!

I would go one step further and suggest that unless you have a fairly powerful external accessory flash unit that you don't want to shoot with flash even if allowed.

Chances are that you would get worse pictures with the flash, since it won't reach (unless you are very close to the performers), and the flash will just cut your exposure times too short.

As leftturn99 intimated above, use Av mode with the lens wide open and pray.

Color balance is going to be crucial - try to get a handle on what it's going to be like before the show starts - if possible get a white card reading to do a custom white balance.

Can you get access to the dress rehersals? It would give you a chance to take some test shots and maybe even get some closeups. I would ask for permission to get close (but staying out of the way) during a dress rehersal. You could even use those shots for your paper.

If you don't use flash -- and I'd avoid it -- Bob is right on with regards to setting a white balance for the stage lights. But be sure you get that balance for the "whitest" light you can on the stage. Putting your white balance card under lighting with color gels will thow it off. Unless you can stop everything and set new white balances for every lighting scene, stick to a generic "indoor" incandescent lighting as your reference white.

And the idea of getting into a dress rehearsal is also one to take advantage of if possible. Sometimes you can even get the director and cast to agree to let you shoot a few bits of action afterwards, when you can have them freeze their positions, and perhaps tweak the lighting just a bit for a better photo.

I'm not sure I would recommend Mknabster shoot in RAW for an important shoot if he isn't used to it, but in RAW, white balance is almost moot. It can be nondestructively adjusted in conversion. I was a little intimidated at first by "degrees of Kelvin", but now that I'm used to it, it's about 5 seconds and it is exactly as I want it.

Isn't it amazing how new technology makes things you worked hard to master irrelevant? I used to be pretty good at Word Pervect 5.1.

Unless you are going for that artsy movement thing, no need to use a tripod. I recently shot a play in our local high school gymnasium and I used the G6 at ISO 400, on Manual exposure mode, and my settings were 1/80th @ f/2.8 for most of the event. I set the white balance to Tungsten and they look terrific.

Of course, at the long end, you don't have f/2.8; I soon discovered that it's best to use mid focal lengths for the best quality, as the G6 lens is not sharp wide open at that point.

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If Word for Windows had an equivalent to "Reveal Codes" we would have no problems at all - Hi!

I talked to the head of the newspaper, and he said that maybe it would be better for me to go the dress rehearsel, but i think i would like to get shots of the actual even too. I like that shot Superbaldguy, but i did notice the noise. I did hear of noise reduction programs out there. Does anyone know of any free ones, or even better, photoshop plug-ins for it? Because i use Elements, and i haven't figured out how to do it yet. Do you guys think the wide-angle lense would be a good choice for using at the play, or should i just use the normal lense on it?

Bob, Reveal Codes is one of the questions I use for my Curmudgeon test. I think you may have passed. Also, LSMFT and BR-549. If they are old race people I ask if they know the head bolt torque settings for an Offy.

What programing language did an IBM 407 use? What is a manila 5081?

Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.

BR-549 was the license plate number of some hill-billy, but I can't remember his name.

The Offenhauser engines that you speak of are probably the ones that were standard for the Indy 500 many-many years ago, but I have no clue as to the torque settings - Hi!

I do not know anything about the IBM 407, per se, but I did learn an IBM assembly language around 1972, but I can't be sure what it was called - I think it was called BAL.

My early experiences were mostly with the Data General 800 microsecond Minicomputer.
You've really got me on manila 5081 - no clue.

Are you familiar with MIL-TFD-41?