Tips for shooting dance performances

[tankster81]

Hi, Would appreciate any and all tips provided in shooting my daughter's dance performances. I'm using a Nikon D90, 80-200 2.8 lens. Set is indoor stage, constantly changing stage & spot lights, and fast movement makes for very challenging shots. Using manual focus, shutter priority, and 1600 ISO. Still get lots of unwanted blurred images of the dancers. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks you.

 

[myfotoguy]

Welcome to the forum!

What have been your results as far as shutter speed and aperture? You might need to bump the ISO even more to get the shutter speed up.

Some general settings and thought I use for stage lighting (general, depends on the venue):

- Spot Metering (often still have to dial in neg exposure compensation). I meter off the face or whatever is in the brightest part of the light, but this depends on how much is in focus due to the depth of field. I usually spot meter and focus off the face. If you underexpose too much then the noise will start creeping in more quickly. If you shoot RAW you can recover some of the highlights that are too bright, but your noise will be better under control.

- If hand holding, consider the rule of thumb of 1/focal length for shutter speed (1.5 for crop sensor). For example, if you are at 200 mm, the rule of thumb for hand holdable shutter speed (without VR lens) is 1/200 x 1.5 = 1/300 (what is available would be 1/250 or 1/320 since there is no 1/300 setting on the camera). So you want somewhere around in there to hold the camera steady. You may need even faster shutters speed to stop the action.

- If you are having trouble keeping the shutter speed up you may consider a tripod or monopod, but that's not always practical. So... remember to breathe and remind yourself to calmly hold the camera steady, pan with the action or anticipate where it will be. While slowly exhaling gently roll your finger on the shutter. All that to help reduce camera shake. I find myself getting sloppy sometimes when shooting so reminding yourself some basics helps you take control and steady yourself a bit better.

- Aperture Priority, I often end up around 2.8, but like to dial higher when I can. Whatever it take to get the shutter speed I need.

- Boost the ISO to get the shutter speed I need. Often up to 2500, rarely 3200 but sometimes that might be needed.

- If subject are moving across the stage use AF-C for focus and dynamic area (not sure the exact terms on the D90)

-WB Auto

-Shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG.

-If you boosted sharpening in your picture control settings, turn it down to 1 or 0 and just sharpen in post. This will also help with noise control.

- You can use noise ninja or similar software to help reduce any unwanted noise you get from high ISO shooting.

 

[tankster81]

Hello Tim and Thank you for the great tips. Sorry for not clairfying I've been using a tripod for these shots. Most my shots have shutter speed 1/250, aperture 2.8, and ISO 1600. I'm focusing manually because it seems I'm more focused (no pun intended) on quantity of shots hoping to get one good one. Reading your reply I need to concentrate on the details like spot metering, ISO, shutter speed, aperature. Performance is coming up so I'll let you know how it goes. Really really appreciate your help. Thanks, Mike