Stage photography with non-professional lighting

[ColinB147]

Hi all,

I've just completed a weekend of dance photography at a school, and wondered if anyone has tips on how to cope with non-professional stage lighting. Here it was very dark towards the wings of the stage (which was a school hall floor) and virtually spot-lit in the centre. It didn't help that there wasn't a steady gradation across the stage; it was quite patchy.

I set my Canon 1DX II with 70-200mm Mk II to manual, F4, 1/640 and ISO 8,000, but as the dancers moved across I found myself controlling the exposure by changing the shutter speed, which varied from 1/400 to 1/2500, using a lot of guesswork tbh!

If I had my time over, how should I have approached it, given the action was all very fast?

Cheers,

Col

 

[RichardC27]

Hi all,

I've just completed a weekend of dance photography at a school, and wondered if anyone has tips on how to cope with non-professional stage lighting. Here it was very dark towards the wings of the stage (which was a school hall floor) and virtually spot-lit in the centre. It didn't help that there wasn't a steady gradation across the stage; it was quite patchy.

I set my Canon 1DX II with 70-200mm Mk II to manual, F4, 1/640 and ISO 8,000, but as the dancers moved across I found myself controlling the exposure by changing the shutter speed, which varied from 1/400 to 1/2500, using a lot of guesswork tbh!

If I had my time over, how should I have approached it, given the action was all very fast?

Cheers,

Col

Given I would say your most important parameter here is shutter speed, I'd have set the camera to Auto-ISO and then dialled in whatever shutter speed you needed. The camera could have controlled exposure then within the Auto ISO parameters. Takes the guesswork out of trying to set exposure fully manually in a fast paced environment, and you ensure your shutter speed is always high enough to stop motion (which I'm assuming you'd want to do). You've got a very good quality sensor in there so high ISO performance should be fine

 

[DemiLion]

Light it yourself.

 

[andrewc]

Getting the stage lighting set so there is a relatively even spread of light over the stage is the first thing. Left to right, front to back. Stage lights have both the abiilty to focus the beam from soft edge to hard edge, and to control the beam shape with either barn doors and/or shutters as primary ways of modifying the light shape, with black foil as a final resort. Cameras pick up the overlit or underlit areas better than an eye does.

If that isn't sufficient, adding lights is an option. Does the venue have additional lamps that could be added to their lighting racks without overloading the power circuits.

If that isn't sufficient, and its not a show in front of any audience, then you could consider adding your own lighting - although this may well overwhelm whatever creative and moody effects the lighting designer has incorporated. It may also distract the dancers from their routine.

I did a lot of amateur theatre lighting before my interest in photography surpassed lighting, and I always tried go get a good even flood of light as a baseline, and then build on that as required with gelled lights to add colour (if require) and any special effects that are required. When I was doing it, LED lights were in their infancy, and were good for adding colour, but poor for general lighting, so we were dealing with traditional filament lamps at 500 or 1000W generally. A single 32 amp power feed would cope with 7,000 watts of lighting. My main amateur theatre had three racks, so 21Kw of lighting, normally a mixture of 500W and 1000W lamps. Now LED is much improved...

Since giving up lighting shows and more into photographing shows I've done a lot of theatre productions with somewhat inadequate lighting, and I generally shoot wide open, choose the lowest shutter speed I can get away with and adjust ISO, or shoot manual and have ISO on auto. I'd also shoot raw as that tolerates underexposure in camera a little more, and modern noise reduction is much better than it was.

 

[ColinB147]

Thanks for your answers (well, mostly!).

I should have said that I had no control over the lighting and shooting raw wasn't an option. I agree with the consensus, my camera is good enough to leave the ISO on auto and I could have shot wide open.

Cheers.