Sarah in a Play

[KellyL]

Hello again. Well, it is time for our weekly Sarah installment. This week, Sarah plays the part of the mayor's wife in The Music Man. She did a great job. It was also a wonderful opportunity to practice using my camera in full manual mode as the lighting conditions changed rapidly from scene to scene. I was most pleased. All of these shots were captured with my Canon 17 - 55 mm f/2.8 USM IS lens. I LOVE that lens. I think I shot all of these at ISO 800 to keep the noise down. I was most pleased with the exposure. And of course, I shot them in RAW, but had to do very little tweaking.

That is her boyfriend she is dancing with.

[felix.reichardt]

Looking good. Where those shot at 2.8?

[KellyL]

I was roaming between 2.8 and 4.0 throughout the night. I am afraid that 2.8 will give me too shallow of a DOF if I used it continuously. Surprisingly, the first set were shot at 2.8, 1/160...which is good, because there was a lot of action. The dancing shot was at 3.5, 1/80, and the infamous Grecian Urn shot was at 3.5, 1/100.

[harryd]

Great job Kelly, I have shot several high school plays and know how difficult it is. Your post processing looks great, I would be thrilled to get results like these.

[Song4themoon]

You did a great job on these

[KellyL]

Thank you very much. I was very pleased. In the past, I have blown out the highlights. For each picture I would try to decide where the brightest spot on the stage was, meter specifically for that spot, adjust camera, then shoot away until the scene changed. I was very nervous.

[Nikonfreak]

Excellent shooting Kelly. Count your blessings that you had fairly decent lighting for a HS play. That's great and the images look excellent as well.

With the shorter lenses don't be afraid to slow the shutter speed down a bit to get some additional saturation in your images.

For concerts my starting point is always ISO 800, 1/125 @ f/3.2 and I see what I get from there. You just can't trust the meter for live performances.

Really great work!

Julio

[KellyL]

Thanks! I used AWB, although, at one point, I changed the WB to tungsten. The shots came out with truer colors, however, I liked the amber tone of the pictures better and changed back to AWB. I went back in Lightroom and changed all of the tungsten shots to match the temperature of the AWB shots. I was a little torn, but shooting in raw gives you unbelievable options.

I am wondering, do you ever shoot on sutter priority in a situation like this? I was tempted to use aperature priority, but stayed away from it.