Its a first, and I need advice - night photography

My son is taking part in a variety show - dancing feature. He is dancing for the first time, he will be on the stage for the first time. And I will be taking night photography in a theatre for the first time.

I have Canon Digital Rebel with EFS 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 and EF 75-300mm 4-5.6 III USM lenses.

Please give me specific pointers to take good night time indoor photographs.

Thanks.

High ISO, large aperture, steady hands, good framing and timing.

With kit lens, unless stage is bright enough to give you at least 1/60 second, otherwise it'll come out either blurry or dark.

Oh, shoot RAW if you can.

Well........

Do you have some extra money to spend??

The lenses that you have are not going to do what you want inside in a theatre at night. Unless of course the lights are up extremely bright. Is this a local theatre or a school?? Do you know what the lighting will be?

You are going to need a faster lens and that equates to $$. The reason you will need the faster lens is due directly to the diminished lighting inside. The lenses that you have will take pictures inside but the shutter speed will be so slow that you will not be able to freeze any action.

Unless I am mistaken you are probably want a lens with an f-stop of 2.0/2.8 of around 200 mm, depending on how far you are from where you son will be. The size of lens required for a full frame of a 5ft. person at 35ft is around 220mm (I think).

You might be able to use a 100mm or the 135mm f2 but I am only speaking now from research and not experience. Possibly the Tamron 90mm would do, depending on the distance.

Right now I would give various body parts for a 70-200mm f2.0 anything.

I'm quite sure that others will say somewhat the same thing.

The other thing that you might do is search for "theatre pictures" and look at the exif info that is posted to see what lenses that other people have used in situations that are similar to where you are going to be.

I guess I'll state the obvious.

Why not use a Speedlite? That is about the only way to get a well-exposed image with a shutter speed appropriate for stage action.

If the stage performers would be startled by the flash, then try it during the dress rehearsal.

---Bob Gross---

I am disappointed now.

I just spent $$ on this kit and I wont be able to take photos.

Unfortunately, I donot have another lense or speedlight.

Will have to sort something out by next week.

Anyway, if there are any other suggestions even if it is to highlight what I wont be able to do with my kits please post. It is learning for me. Thank all for your feedback. Much appreciated.

You might also apply the "firmware hack" (search here) to get a higher ISO. I used to do some theatre photography, and was able to get good results at ISO 400 with Canon's (tack-sharp) 80-200 FD on a tripod. This was, of course, in the good old days of film and 400 was fast for colour. The lens wasn't especially fast, either.

Doh! (smacks forehead...)

I get so caught up in my own problems where I won't be able to use a flash that I forget about them.

Ok, I still would suggest that if possible you get to the venue where he will be performing and check it out for lighting (if possible). If it is too dark for the lenses that you have, then you might be able to rent a lens for the evening. I have not tried this but it is possible.

Do you know how far you will be from the stage? Distance is going to play a big part in what you need.

Help me out please forum people, I am way out of my league here in trying to give advice.

If you can afford another $75.00 & the staff of the theatre will allow the use of Flash try the Vivitar 285 Flash and practice using it. It's a simple but effective unit.

Do you have a tripod or Monopod? that will be a big help with what you're trying to do.

I took these pictures with the EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens mostly zoomed all the way in, so my aperture was f/5.6... which was way to slow for the lighting conditions there. You can see there is a bit of blur in all of the photos, and some have even more. I was mostly at ISO 800 for those. Next time I have a chance to shoot in those conditions, I plan on having the 70-200 f/2.8 L IS... which should do very well. You could try renting one if it's not too much.

Something you might try... depending on the light, the settings may be different.
Shoot in RAW mode, use ISO 800 and use a manual setting (smallest f-number allowed by your lens, with a shutter speed around 1/80th of a second or so). They will probably be a bit dark, you can brighten the exposure when processing the RAW images. I didn't do this with my photos above, but now that I know a bit more, I probably would have done something. Try a few test shots and find a setting that works.

The performance is taking place in a University of Victoria's art and drama theatre. So I am assuming that they would have good lighting system on the stage. I will try to shoot as close to the stage as possible - mostly likely from one corner.

Unfortunately, I will not be allowed in before the public doors are opened.

I do have a tripod. Renting a lense sounds like a good idea. I will have to ring around the only two camera shops in Victoria.

Since this is a kids dance I expect those kids to be pretty fast on their tippy toes. Therefore fast shutter speed will be critical.

Tofuboy, your photos look good except, as you mentioned, some are blurred. I can attempt to take photo at the setting you have suggested as my initial benchmark. And work from there to reduce blur.

On White Balancing, would it be worth taking a photo of a white wall and setting Custom WB on that wall. Or are there any other technique?

If you decide to shoot in RAW, don't bother with white balance at all (use auto or something), you can adjust the white balance later in the RAW processing. If shooting jpg, using a custom wb of a white surface luminated under the stage lighting would be a good idea. You could do the same if you shot in RAW, but I just don't bother with it when I shoot in RAW. I usually carry a white 8.5x11 sheet of paper in my camera bag for custom white balance...

Also, if you haven't shot in RAW before, you might try it before this event to see if it's something you like. It takes a bit more time of post processing to get a final result.

If they do have a good lighting system, chances are the lighting will change many times throughout the performance. If you shoot JPEG, be ready to keep changing your custom WB setting. RAW made shooting my niece's dance recital last spring a lot easier (at least until I got home and everybody was expecting pictures right away).

Don't even bother with custom white balance, at least with shifting it as the lighting changes. If you can get it from the basic unfiltered lights, use that. Otherwise, IIRC theatre lights run about 3400K. If you change custom WB whenever the lighting changes you'll be killing the lighting designer's wotk, and driving yourself crazy at the same time.

OK. This is going to be the first for me to shoot in RAW. The summary of what I have learnt is that I need a faster lense, start with wide aperture with 1/80sec to freeze the frame. Use flash if possible but if the stage lighting is sufficient then flash may not be necessary.

Forget WB as RAW provides a post-processing function to adjust WB.

I have 4 days to go so keep those tips and advice coming in. Appreciate every word you pass me. Cheers!

The 1/80 shutter speed is just a guess, it really depends on how fast the subjects are moving. You could test at home what a good shutter speed to shoot for is with your son. Have him do some of his routine and take a few pictures with varying shutter speeds. Choose the slowest one that captures the action.