ISO/NOISE/Aperture/Shutter Speed etc. etc.

Bend The Light

Bend The Light

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Craig
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I am shooting a stage show again this next week for my local theatre group (my daughter is in it). Last time I used the 50mm f1.8 and legged it up and down the audience seats for close or wide shots. Mostly I used f2.2 or slightly smaller aperture, with auto-ISO and Shutter Priority at 1/60th. It worked well, except I was knackered.

In fact this was 1/80th, ISO 400, f2:


Rocky Horror 14 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr

This time, I have arranged to be at all 4 shows (the previous have only been one night so I took photos on dress rehearsal so i could watch the show uniterrupted). I have borrowed a 24-70 f2.8 L USM lens. Nice lens, weighs a ton! the idea being that I can stay in one place and take shots. Even from just in front of the stage I can nearly get all the stage at 24mm. And i can get a 3 person group from the back of the theatre (in the balcony) at 70mm, or all the stage from up there at about 45mm.

Problem is, I tried today (admittedly no proper lights) and set the camera to ISO 1000, f2.8, Shutter priority 1/50th. But the images are terrible. So, should I increase ISO and use a slightly smaller aperture to improve quality, or should I leave as is?

Here's a crop of one of the players (same guy as above actually):


fagin noise by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr

Do you think once the proper lights are up that the noise will be less apparent? I may be able to reduce ISO, or decrease aperture?
And would you decrease aperture and increase ISO, or decrease ISO and maintain f2.8? Noisewise?

Lots of questions. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I have a full dress rehearsal on Tuesday night, so not too much prssure yet. if I don't nail it then, that's when I'll panic. :)
 
ChrisGilbert said:
What AF mode are you using here, Craig ?....
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Using normal, back button focus. Mostly centre spot. Using spot metering, sometimes using the AE-lock to meter from something in particular.

So, basically, AE-lock the exposure, recompose, Back button focus, shutter.
 
shaylou said:
What ever you do try to reduce the iso an work around that. I'm also a bit confused on why you are using spot metering.
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Beause wher the lights are on the players, there seems to be high contrast. If I metered the whole scene I figured I would get blown out faces and pitch black shadows. So i metered for the faces (or midlle of the range colours) and the faces were exposed much better.

What would you recommend?
 
I'm not sure you can achieve anything useful until/unless the proper lights are in play. In your crop above the guy is clearly underexposed, and OOF, and the arm disappearing in the background has much better exposure. Either your lighting tech needs to up his/her game or you need to be shooting the people who are intended to be the focus of attention.

I also see shooting Tv mode at 1/50 to be quite a gamble. There's not only camera shake to worry about, and at 70mm on a crop body, and then scrutinised at 100% 1/50 is probably nowhere near sufficient, but there's also subject motion as well.

Assuming the lighting on the people of importance to be relatively even throughout the performance I'd be looking to set a manual exposure with shutter speed maybe around 1/125 or so, aperture pretty wide - may as well aim for f/2.8 with the zoom - and don't be afraid to raise the ISO as high as necessary for a "good" exposure. Better to get the exposure right in camera than try to brighten things up later on. On a 40D I would not hesitate to go to 1600 ISO at least, if required and even 3200. So long as you do a good job of filling the frame the shot should still be quite usable even at those figures. The danger is trying to crop heavily at high ISO values.

I have only ever shot one stage performance, which was an amateur production, but with reasonable lighting I was getting this kind of result with my 50D and 85/1.8 at 1/125, f/2, 400 ISO, no edits except a little cropping....

20091009_220450_4704_LR.jpg


So until the proper lights are running I suspect you are onto a loser.
 
tdodd said:
I'm not sure you can achieve anything useful until/unless the proper lights are in play. In your crop above the guy is clearly underexposed, and OOF, and the arm disappearing in the background has much better exposure. Either your lighting tech needs to up his/her game or you need to be shooting the people who are intended to be the focus of attention.

I also see shooting Tv mode at 1/50 to be quite a gamble. There's not only camera shake to worry about, and at 70mm on a crop body, and then scrutinised at 100% 1/50 is probably nowhere near sufficient, but there's also subject motion as well.

Assuming the lighting on the people of importance to be relatively even throughout the performance I'd be looking to set a manual exposure with shutter speed maybe around 1/125 or so, aperture pretty wide - may as well aim for f/2.8 with the zoom - and don't be afraid to raise the ISO as high as necessary for a "good" exposure. Better to get the exposure right in camera than try to brighten things up later on. On a 40D I would not hesitate to go to 1600 ISO at least, if required and even 3200. So long as you do a good job of filling the frame the shot should still be quite usable even at those figures. The danger is trying to crop heavily at high ISO values.

I have only ever shot one stage performance, which was an amateur production, but with reasonable lighting I was getting this kind of result with my 50D and 85/1.8 at 1/125, f/2, 400 ISO, no edits except a little cropping....

20091009_220450_4704_LR.jpg


So until the proper lights are running I suspect you are onto a loser.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I think I am worrying a little too much and that the images won't be right until the light are up properly. I'll see tomorrow night. :)

Cheers
 
I've done it a few times, the best lens for this is a 70-200 2.8, put it on a monopod.

Sit in the audience where 70mm covers the whole stage near the centre and that'll be your spot. Unless you have a second body, I.e. another lens like a 35/50mm then stay where you are.

Use spot metering, meter on the face.
Use Aperature priority mode
Set ISO to either auto or 1600 (depending on scene), at 200mm, even with a monopod you need some fast shutter speed due to low light and movement of actors.

Things you'll find:

Red spot light causes the skin the mash together, the sensor cannot resolve the texture.
Your white balance will be shot due to the changes in colour of all the lights, prepared to lot of work in post to fix this.
Get comfortable in your seat and at times you need to shoot with both eyes open. When zoom in at 200mm, have the other eye open to pay attention on the rest of the scene.
If you've neve seen the play before then always be ready for the shot.
Might need to take 2 shots of every one, people blink, lots.
Also, i don't focus and recompose...do people still do that? It waste too much time, just shoot with outer focus points, it's easy.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
I've done it a few times, the best lens for this is a 70-200 2.8, put it on a monopod.

Sit in the audience where 70mm covers the whole stage near the centre and that'll be your spot. Unless you have a second body, I.e. another lens like a 35/50mm then stay where you are.

Use spot metering, meter on the face.
Use Aperature priority mode
Set ISO to either auto or 1600 (depending on scene), at 200mm, even with a monopod you need some fast shutter speed due to low light and movement of actors.

Things you'll find:

Red spot light causes the skin the mash together, the sensor cannot resolve the texture.
Your white balance will be shot due to the changes in colour of all the lights, prepared to lot of work in post to fix this.
Get comfortable in your seat and at times you need to shoot with both eyes open. When zoom in at 200mm, have the other eye open to pay attention on the rest of the scene.
If you've neve seen the play before then always be ready for the shot.
Might need to take 2 shots of every one, people blink, lots.
Also, i don't focus and recompose...do people still do that? It waste too much time, just shoot with outer focus points, it's easy.
Click to expand...

All good, other than the 70-200. The theatre is not big enough for 70mm to get the stage...50mm JUST gets the stage in full shot with my back on the rear wall.

All the other stuff fits quite well with what I have done before.

Cheers.
 
tricky
remember that when you zoom in that you'll lose ambient light (unless you're zooming in on a bulb!!)
I would use a tripod/monopod as suggested
where about in t'world are you?

wide shots you can always do with a compact and get some nice portraits with the 40D
do you have a flash? if it's dress rehearsals can you get away with that?
 
DizMatt said:
tricky
remember that when you zoom in that you'll lose ambient light (unless you're zooming in on a bulb!!)
I would use a tripod/monopod as suggested
Click to expand...

I don't think I will zoom in that much...I have 3 nights of shows at which I can take shots. I can be down the front on one night doing close shots, and up in the balcony for the wide shots another night. Third night is for mopping up any I missed, and 4th show is when I sit and watch with the family!

I think I will take the 'pod though. :)

DizMatt said:
where about in t'world are you?
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Barnsley.

DizMatt said:
wide shots you can always do with a compact and get some nice portraits with the 40D
do you have a flash? if it's dress rehearsals can you get away with that?
Click to expand...

No flash. I don't have one, and also, the show has a lot of kids in it who would be even more distracted by me than they are already, not to mention some of the adults. And during the actual shows, i will be the only one shooting...cameras not allowed.
 
Shoot RAW

Shoot manual and use your eye

3200 is fine if you need to a lot of noise can be avoided by exposing properly

You won't know til the lights are at production levels what the light will do.

Don't crop unless you have to and by size of venue you shouldn't need to.

Think of others watching the show, don't be "the idiot with the camera" you may be there to photograph but they are there to enjoy the show!

Don't panic you have 4 shots at it
 
Some great advice here. I agree with getting the aperture wide open, shutter speed up and whatever iso is necessary to get a good exposure. Apologies if it's been mentioned already but use the histogram tool and 'expose to the right'. It really maximises your chances of getting usable images later on. As soon as you start to underexpose, you're going to be in trouble.
 
ding76uk said:
Shoot RAW

Shoot manual and use your eye

3200 is fine if you need to a lot of noise can be avoided by exposing properly

You won't know til the lights are at production levels what the light will do.

Don't crop unless you have to and by size of venue you shouldn't need to.

Think of others watching the show, don't be "the idiot with the camera" you may be there to photograph but they are there to enjoy the show!

Don't panic you have 4 shots at it
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll be testing proper toniht. We'll see how it goes. As for "the idiot with a camera", I may be one, but for this show I have empty seats (not sold for various reasons down at the front...no need to be in anyone's way. And for the show when I'm up in the balcony, I will be sat on the steps in the aisle, right next to my dad who will be watching my daughter in the show. :) I won't be in anyone's way, popping up in front of anyone. in fact, the area directly in front of the stage is filled with the band. :)

Cheers

gad-westy said:
Some great advice here. I agree with getting the aperture wide open, shutter speed up and whatever iso is necessary to get a good exposure. Apologies if it's been mentioned already but use the histogram tool and 'expose to the right'. It really maximises your chances of getting usable images later on. As soon as you start to underexpose, you're going to be in trouble.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I will have a look properly tonight...I know it will be better....

:)
 
Bend The Light said:
Beause wher the lights are on the players, there seems to be high contrast. If I metered the whole scene I figured I would get blown out faces and pitch black shadows. So i metered for the faces (or midlle of the range colours) and the faces were exposed much better.

What would you recommend?
Click to expand...

I first though in that situation would be center weight metering.
 
shaylou said:
I first though in that situation would be center weight metering.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I have had almost as many opinions as there are responses to this question. I decided to wait and see what happened on the dress rehearsal night, which was last night. It appears that I managed some very useable shots last night. I also managed to recce the various vantage points I will use for the three nights I will be shooting.

I ended up switching to manual, spot meter, f2.8, 1/60th and AUTO ISO (except when it went really dark for one scene when I upped the ISO - auto only does 400-800).

Cheers
 
I would still aim to increase the shutter speed.
 
PsiFox said:
I would still aim to increase the shutter speed.
Click to expand...

Even increasing ISO to 1600 at f2.8 wasn't giving me shutters as fast as 1/60. I set 1/60 and then the ISO varied according to the light between the 400 and 800. Noise is less of an issue, it seems. We shall see how the images turn out from last night anyway...

Cheers
 
Noise is easier to accept/fix than blur/shake, so just keep an eye on how things are shaping up.
 
tdodd said:
Noise is easier to accept/fix than blur/shake, so just keep an eye on how things are shaping up.
Click to expand...

Yes, I know what you mean. I may up the ISO yet to about 1000 or 1250 and see how we go. I already have a decent number of photos so a little bit of leeway to experiment again on Friday. :)

Cheers
 
Bend The Light said:
Even increasing ISO to 1600 at f2.8 wasn't giving me shutters as fast as 1/60. I set 1/60 and then the ISO varied according to the light between the 400 and 800. Noise is less of an issue, it seems. We shall see how the images turn out from last night anyway...

Cheers
Click to expand...
That doesn't make sense to me??? if Auto ISO was giving you between 400-800 then i would have thought manually setting to 1600 would allow you to bump the shutter speed above 1/60th????
 
ljphil78 said:
That doesn't make sense to me??? if Auto ISO was giving you between 400-800 then i would have thought manually setting to 1600 would allow you to bump the shutter speed above 1/60th????
Click to expand...

When I was using Aperture Priority, set the aperture to f2.8, and ISo from 1000 up to 1600 I was getting shutter speeds of varying times, from 1/13 up to around 1/100th, depending on what I was shooting. In some cases I want to expose more than just the face - exposing just the face often led to the rest of the scene being very dark, and thus giving me noise.

By setting the shutter at 1/60, I was able to meter the faces and things were exposed enough to show clothes and scenery...obviously at the expense of some motion blur in some shots.

My dilemma is whether to stick with a relatively low ISo, like 800, but risk underexposing and having noise that way, or raising the ISO up to 1000+ and risk introducing noise there, with a possibility of a better exposure to start with. Noise either way, though...
 
Well, here we go...a couple or six shots from the shows. In the end I went with shutter priority most of the time, got the ISo up to 1000, shutter at 1/100. The aperture mostly was from f2.8 up to about 3.5...rarely more. I also made use of the programmable slots on the selecting dial C1, C2, and C3. Had ISO 1250, and ISO 1600 on the others for the really dark scenes to try to get more light and hence less noise. To be honest, never really thought that using high ISO could be as noise free as long as lots of light coming in. But it worked quite well.

Thanks to all who helped. :)

Noise was a lot less of an issue, and I also took advice on some noise removal using ACR (decent settings to use, basically), so I processed the whole batch with that first, then did individual photos afterwards from that starting point. In most cases I just had to crop and sharpen. In some I did B&W conversions using Silver Efex Pro as I think it suits the scenes. In all, it worked very well...the customers are all very pleased (I showed them some on the iPad) and they will all be ordering CD/DVD of the images once I have them all done. :)


A Fine Life (Reprise) 2675 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr


Who Will Buy 2643 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr


My Name 2600 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr


Oom Pah Pah 2550 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr


Be Back Soon 0455 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr


Nancy's Murder and bill Sykes is Shot 0819 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr
 
Bend The Light said:
Well, here we go...a couple or six shots from the shows. In the end I went with shutter priority most of the time, got the ISo up to 1000, shutter at 1/100. The aperture mostly was from f2.8 up to about 3.5...rarely more. I also made use of the programmable slots on the selecting dial C1, C2, and C3. Had ISO 1250, and ISO 1600 on the others for the really dark scenes to try to get more light and hence less noise. To be honest, never really thought that using high ISO could be as noise free as long as lots of light coming in. But it worked quite well.

Thanks to all who helped. :)

Noise was a lot less of an issue, and I also took advice on some noise removal using ACR (decent settings to use, basically), so I processed the whole batch with that first, then did individual photos afterwards from that starting point. In most cases I just had to crop and sharpen. In some I did B&W conversions using Silver Efex Pro as I think it suits the scenes. In all, it worked very well...the customers are all very pleased (I showed them some on the iPad) and they will all be ordering CD/DVD of the images once I have them all done. :)



My Name 2600 by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr
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All excellent but I think this one is superb.
 
Excellent results, and a fine looking production. :thumbs:
 
gad-westy said:
All excellent but I think this one is superb.
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Yes, I like that one too. He had a certain menace, and a good look of Bill Sykes. A nasty man. :)

tdodd said:
Excellent results, and a fine looking production. :thumbs:
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It was an excellent production for a theatre company that hasn't been going long...all amateur. 40 members including kids as young as 5 and adults up to 65 (possibly older!). My daughter was in it too, aged 6. We made the scenery and painted it all. We're very proud of it. :)

Red9R said:
They are fantastic!
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Thank you. :)

Pete Oliver said:
Craig,

what truely amazing shots!

Peter.
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Thank you. :)
 
Cracked it then Craig. You worry too much, these are really great shots.
 
Pete Bird said:
Cracked it then Craig. You worry too much, these are really great shots.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes, I do worry. I never think I am doing good photos, despite when people like the stuff i produce. The customers will like them, and will pay me a bit for CDs, so that's worth it. :)

Cheers
 
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