-=Rebel T1i / 500D Users Stand UP! (2)

Last week we stayed on Lake Nantahala in North Carolina. The house we rented provided 2 kayaks. I found this eagle sitting in the tree and waited for him to fly away!

^well done, love the soft clouds too

I was asked the last minute, as a favor, to cover a highschool night theater.
Obviously, the first thing i asked was about the lighting. I was told that there will be 2 huge spotlights lighting the scene.
As i arrived, i discovered that those huge spotlights were so weak that lighting was non existing.

I used my tamron , TV mode dialed to 1/40 - 1/50 , F4 and let me iso vary.

shot around 100 images, and I dont think there is a single image with spot-on sharpness.
I used evaluating metering, and I now think that was a mistake. Was it??
Also, maybe I should have used AI servo, which i havent. Another mistake?

Resulting images were underexposed as expected.
did a quick brightness/exp adjust & noise reduction. For the crappy school year book the images(most) were more that acceptable.


what a horrible experience that was!!
Suggestions for future reference?

Main suggestion is - get at least one fast prime.

For F4 I would go full manual with flash set to minimum compensation and ISO800-1600.
This will keep flash burst at minimum.
If no flash allowed, I'll increase ISO up to 6400, to have exposure meter to the right from the middle.
You are not going to get sharp pictures of people on stage at 1/40 and 1/50, you got motion blur.

Chrizz wrote in post #14500984
I used my tamron , TV mode dialed to 1/40 - 1/50 , F4 and let me iso vary.

shot around 100 images, and I dont think there is a single image with spot-on sharpness.
I used evaluating metering, and I now think that was a mistake. Was it??
Also, maybe I should have used AI servo, which i havent. Another mistake?
...
Suggestions for future reference?

AI Servo would be a good place to start, what did you use? Also, with your Tamron, you only get the 4.0 at 70mm, as you zoom in you lose some light and can't get more than f/5.6. I suspect with the low light and long shutter speed a tripod would also have helped (if you were able to use one).

JasonMK wrote in post #14501574
AI Servo would be a good place to start,

+1 on AI servo. well, at least you now have some experience and hopefully learned something for the next opportunity !

keep shooting
enjoy

because my gear is not suited for low light shooting I had my zoom to 70mm to achieve the F4. I did not zoom.

K: I didnt want to go to manual mode and kept that iso at 1600-no flash.
jason: i didnt want long shutter speed, that would blur the movements.

Chrizz wrote in post #14501950
K: I didnt want to go to manual mode and kept that iso at 1600-no flash.
jason: i didnt want long shutter speed, that would blur the movements.

1/50 on TV with ISO1600 and F4 is not going to work in bad light. It is too underexposed and not fast enough even for slow stage performance.

When your subject is illuminated by a spotlight and the rest of the scene is dark, then yes, you probably want to use spot metering. Depending on how much of your frame your lit subject fills, the camera could over or underexpose the scene when you use evaluative.

There really was not much you could do in that situation though with what you had. Just bump ISO. A sharp picture with noise is better than a motion blurred image with no noise. But, it still may not have been enough. Only other thing to do (if flash is not allowed) would be to use a faster lens. Borrow/Rent/Buy. Not sure how much time you had since they asked you last minute.

Their fault really though for not planning ahead of time and asking you or someone earlier.

Went to the LA Zoo with my 55-250

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/iisrandy/729986​4494/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/iisrandy/729986​5602/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/iisrandy/729986​7314/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/iisrandy/729986​6402/

Here is a shot from a recent shoot with Heidi Jo aka Miss Pensacola. More awesome shots of her on my Flickr.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/ddbias/72998578​80/

nice set whoty. did you use the umbrella for this shoot?

tagnal wrote in post #14503869
When your subject is illuminated by a spotlight and the rest of the scene is dark, then yes, you probably want to use spot metering. Depending on how much of your frame your lit subject fills, the camera could over or underexpose the scene when you use evaluative.

There really was not much you could do in that situation though with what you had. Just bump ISO. A sharp picture with noise is better than a motion blurred image with no noise. But, it still may not have been enough. Only other thing to do (if flash is not allowed) would be to use a faster lens. Borrow/Rent/Buy. Not sure how much time you had since they asked you last minute.

Their fault really though for not planning ahead of time and asking you or someone earlier.

After the shoot i thought partial metering would be more appropriate. Evaluative was not a good choice.

kf095 wrote in post #14502215
1/50 on TV with ISO1600 and F4 is not going to work in bad light. It is too underexposed and not fast enough even for slow stage performance.

I think a better option would have been to dial my shutter speed to around 1/100 and let the iso go to 3200. I did not do that.

whoty: great one

Chrizz wrote in post #14501950
jason: i didnt want long shutter speed, that would blur the movements.

But I think many of us would consider 1/40 - 1/50 to be long enough to benefit from a tripod, that's all that I was suggesting. And if you stayed at 70mm to keep the f/4.0 (which was good thinking) you may have captured too much contrast between the in the spotlight stage lighting and the areas that fell out of the spotlight. Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm curious if you zoomed in tighter on a better lit portion of the stage if your shots would have benefited.

Care to post any samples?