Low light challenge - The Carolina Ballet

Blade Canyon

Senior Member
Yesterday was the Carolina Ballet's dress rehearsal for their new show based on Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Turns out there was a photography class through perconline.org where students could shoot the ballet during the dress rehearsal, even with noisy SLRs. (No flash allowed at all... had to tape down the pop up flash on the camera before admittance just to prevent accidental firing.) We could not move around once we were set up, so all my shots were from the exact same angle. It was definitely a low light challenge. All shots were made in RAW at ISO 1600, boosting exposure in post when necessary (per Jsee!). Shutter speed was 1/400th to catch the action, and aperture on my Nikon 70-200 VR1 was set at 2.8 to 3.5 (reduced it a little as I shot hoping for sharper images).

Out of 700 images, probably only a dozen might be really good. In so many other images, the soloist might be perfectly captured in a great pose, but the eyes are half-closed, or the other dancers arms and legs are cluttering up the shots. Ultra Plus 16gb SanDisk cards performed flawlessly, while the basic SanDisk 16gb card was hitting the buffer limit repeatedly. My viewfinder kept fogging up because my face was against the camera for such long periods. It was a good learning experience, and I'm doing a similar class again on October 7th. Any of you in the Raleigh area should sign up. $155, which includes your entrance to the ballet.

The instructor was sitting about 10 feet closer than I was. We were using the same settings, but his images were clearer. He also had a more recent Canon body and the most recent pro lens which was his explanation for why the faces in my images were noisier. Next time I will sit closer. The auto-focus on the D800 worked great. AF-C 51 for whole stage shots, AF-S 1 point for soloists.

No noise reduction has been applied to these. I noticed the men tended to get the better bright white lighting. Lighting on the women was more subdued.


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#carolinaballet #theplanets
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I think those are all very well done.

I'm shooting ballet dancers a bit myself right now and it's proving quite challenging when they're in a large group; what with all those limbs flying around and what not...
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Blade Canyon

Senior Member
I'm shooting ballet dancers a bit myself right now and it's proving quite challenging when they're in a large group; what with all those limbs flying around and what not...
...

You're right, there are many pictures like this one, where the primary dancers look good, but the other dancers just make the photograph look cluttered.

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Actually, that just gave me the idea to cut out, blur, and/or darken the other dancers. Here's another take on that same shot.

D80_5588b.jpg
 
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Blade Canyon

Senior Member
https://www.flickr.com/photos/41728000@N08/albums/72157656690431014


I took another class this week for a new ballet, "Symphonie Fantastique: Un Bal." On the night of that dress rehearsal, I shot well over 1,000 pictures with both the D800 and D600. I can understand why pro photographers are so demanding about the quality of their equipment.

Some of the new pics are in the Flickr album posted above, along with shots from the previous dress rehearsal.

I blew out my hard drive at home with all of these D800 NEF files, so ordered a Western Digital 8 Terrabyte RAID drive to back up all pics, videos, and music. When set up as mirrored hard drives, it's really 4TB x 2. It should arrive today.

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