Low Light Equipment Needs

Hello all. It's been a bit since I've been through the forums due to being so busy the last few months. I've not had much time for recreational photography.

Recently I was asked to be the journalistic photographer for my church's General Assembly that is held annually. This gathering is an assembly of all the churches from around the world to conduct the buisness of the church for the next year. Thus it is greatly important to have good photography work for the visual record keeping and memory of the event, not only for the sake of the church's history but for print publication afterwards as well.

I was asked on short notice and was greatly short on equipment to meet the needs of the enviornment. The auditorium has very low lighting and it is also a very large auditorium as well. Probably in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 30,000 square feet total.

My plight is this... As stated above I was underequiped. I knew I was but my experience and the late timing made me the best man for the job. As a result I have been asked to do the work each year and I am going to have to invest quite a bit of money into getting some great equipment. I have a 20D and right now I have the standard kit lens. I was fortunate enough to find an 85mm Canon lens from a friend to use this year (I have just returned.), which wasn't as good as I need but it helped a bit more than the 55mm kit lens for the shots that required a closer profile shot taken from off stage.

I have a few quick thoughts as to what I would need but I'd like to get some suggestions from the more experienced, professional photogrpahers in the audience. I'm sure a flash, a telephoto, a few small fixed lenses will be on the list but my use of more specialized lenses is limited. I use a 70mm - 200mm zoom on my job and the standard 28mm - 55mm type lenses. Any suggestions of any equipment I may need is greatly appreciated and welcomed. I'm in grave need of a working list of the proper equipment suitable for the enviornment as I need to begin planning on next years work. This time next year I want to have exceptional results from the trip.

Thank you all in advance.

I'm no pro by any close measure, but I'd say the 24-70 f2.8 L would be a good start.

The 70-200 F2.8 IS and the 100-400 are the first lenses that come to mind, along with a standard zoom like the tamron 28-75 F2.8 or sigma 24-70 F2.8. You might also have to invest in lighting equipment.

Depends how low is low light. If you need light sucking ability, nothing beats primes.

50/1.4 and 85/1.8 would give you awesome low light pictures. But if reach is an issue, then I don't know how you'd do it.

Try the 70-200/2.8. Sigma's version is much cheaper, and almost as good!

I recently did some photos for my churches conference. I just used my 20D set on 1600, and tripod, no flash.
http://praisetemplechu​rch.org/images/St_Conf​/index.htm

If there isn't a problem with you using your flash, you really won't have a problem using the equipment you have.

I'm my church's lead photographer and we've just built a photo repository using smugmug. We have a couple of folks that shoot 20d's and a few that shoot D70's. Results at higher ISO are better with the 20d but when there is a lot of light, the D70's do quite well. I shoot most of the bigger events like concerts and the like. I NEVER use flash, unless I'm shooting some impromtu portraits of pastors outside, so I'll use fill flash. Other than that, all my indoor shots are ISO 1600, wide open aperture(2.8 or faster) and shutter speed above 1/160th.

Check out the Concert gallery and that is I have the most fun. http://www.baysidepict​ures.com

I've been real happy with the results although I have invested a lot of my own $$ in lenses. The lenes I use the most are the 70-200 2.8L and my 28-70 2.8L. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Good Luck,

Darren

One more trick that I've used is to shoot RAW and stick with a specific shutter speed. I try to maintain 1/160 when I shoot concerts. Make sure CF 16 is set to disabled and take some shots that are underexposed. I've found that in post processing, you can get 1-1.5 stops back with little additional noise.

In low light, shooting at shutter speeds under 1/100 really require a tripod.

Darren

Though you didn't mention what kind of shots you'd be doing, I'd look at the 35mm f1.4l, 85mm f1.2l, and 135mm f2.0l As a base setof lenses. If you need some reach I'd probably look at a 300 f4 IS. Unless you have the big dollars for the f2.8 version. Depending on the shots you are doing (and the 20d 1.6x crop) you might swap the 35 for the 24mm f1.4l.

Even if you find yourself shooting at smaller apatures i.e. f2.8 or f4, I find the auto focusing on the faster lenses is far more accurate then with the slower ones. Also you will get a much brighter viewfinder, and imho better colors and contrast. I would skip the zooms in this situation if possible, although the 70-200 f2.8l is would be very usable here.

Flash (I would prefer to use available light in this situation, but flash with a softbox and FEC turned down a stop or two might help as a fill, keep the expsosure set to the long side and the lens fairly open to let in as much ambient light as possible), monopod, tripod and cable release would be additional accessories depending on the type of shooting. If you are going to be doing any tripod setups and long exposures consider a right angle viewfinder attachment, far, far easier to focus in low light, but immposible to use for candid photography.

my 2 cents. Hope this helps