XT + 70-200 f/4 and really low light...

Well, I had to shoot this event for the school newspaper and I ran into a few problems. I had to shoot from about 200 feet from the stage, and my gear isn't quite up to par. I had to use my 70-200 f/4 and my XT. Didn't bring a tripod because I couldn't use that either, so I had to handhold. My 70-200 f/4 doesn't have IS.

I got my camera out and realized I was going to have big troubles when I started metering the stage - I was underexposing by 1.5 to 2 stops at 1/250, 1600 ISO, and f/4, which was as low as I could go. I took some pictures like this and then decided to try going to lower shutter speeds and see how they came out. I really concentrated on keeping my arms in to my chest and shooting while exhaling. Anyway, went down to 1/125 at 200 mm (320mm effectively) and that was OK. I went all the way down to 1/30 second handholding, at 200 mm.

Here is the result: 1/30s, 1600 ISO, f/4 handheld Second pic is 100% crop.

Point is, that even with some not very adequate gear, you can get acceptable images for web use and small prints (like newspaper) with proper technique.

Also, these photos were not touched from the raw (sliders are all default etc) just resized and applied a bit of USM.

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Very nice.
Nick

Yeah. I had a similar issue once when shooting live stage. Same lens but on an EOS400D, 1/50th second at 200mm. Image stabilisation is nice and I would have died to have it, but it does show that with a bit of practice and a bit of effort, you can pull it off. Keeper rate would have been vastly higher with IS though

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A shutter speed of 1/30 is a very nice speed to shoot the conductor (if there is one) as he conducts. The hands are a blur of motion, while his body should remain tack-sharp.

Great job getting the shots above! I struggled with my 17-40L the first time I was tasked to shoot. Didn't want to go above ISO800 so I was stuck.

I've found that ISO800 + Noise Ninja with the XT yields awesome results. My XT presents some bad color noise at 1600... I'm surprised at how yours fared. Though, you have a killer lens on that body so that probably helped in the "resolving detail" area!

The problem with low shutter speeds aside from being able to hand hold is the subject tends to end up blurred with even the slightest movement. This is where pure raw speed can't be beat..... faster lenses. Otherwise you are constantly waiting for a pause/break in the subjects movement. Blur can be used to good affect, such as hand and arm movement but we still want to get blur free shots most of the time... of course that depends on the look you are after.

I pretty much don't shoot below 1/125s for animated performers. 1/160 is what I aim for.

Sam, what raw converter are you using? Is that an old ACR version?
I used to get those annoying white specs in my raws at high ISOs with the old ACR that came with the PS CS2.
With the new ACR, you can get much less noise out of those images, and the color noise reduction is also less aggressive.
(BTW, I'm not working for adobe.)