Photrographing dancers what settings

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psychology

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Russell
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Hi All

I am going to photographing some professional ballroom dancers and am looking for a few tips.

The lighting is fairly dim and the dancers will be anything from 15 to 70 feet away. I would like to freeze the action and if possible blur the background as there will be an audience behind them.

So please bare with me as i am new to this photography stuff....

Would you set the aperture to say 6.3, shutter speed of 1/125 or 1/250, and then adjust the iso to get correct exposure, or am I going about this the wrong way.

I will be using a canon 30d and a 18-55is or 55-250is.


Many thanks!
 
You are going to struggle.

I don't know the ISO performance of that camera as I don't do canon's. But, yes, you are going to need a shutter speed of 1/125+, remembering the rule of thumb that the shutter has to be equal to or greater than the focal length. So if shooting the 55-250 at 250 you'll need 1/250+.

You then need to play around with aperture and ISO, maybe worth banging it on shutter priority and seeing what that can do.

If shooting in manual, you will probably be better off opening aperture as wide as possible and then adjusting the ISO. Check the DOF you are getting as well because this will also be effected.

If you had a flash this might be easier for you.
 
Hi. I'd be looking to do some second curtain/slow sync flash, will be hard to 'freeze' the action without harsh looking flash.
 
Don't be afraid to whack the ISO right up. You may get a grainy shot, but a grainy shot is preferable to a blurred one every time
 
Unfortunately the use of flash is not allowed whilst they are dancing. Would you suggest starting with a shutter speed of 1/125 and adjusting the aperture and the iso as required. I suppose I am looking for suggestions on how you would approach this and what your starting point would be.

By the way these are purely for myself so no great pressure just trying to improve my photography as i would also like to start photographing local bands and the lighting situation seems similar.

Very grateful for all of your kind help.
 
go buy a better iso handling body and some 2.8 lenses or maybe an f2 tele prime. A bit defeatist I know but dance halls usually end up at f2.8 iso 3200 1/100th or something crappy and it just ruins your life :s
 
david1701 said:
go buy a better iso handling body and some 2.8 lenses or maybe an f2 tele prime. A bit defeatist I know but dance halls usually end up at f2.8 iso 3200 1/100th or something crappy and it just ruins your life :s
Click to expand...

I'll show this to my wife :)

Actually she is getting into photography so i am actually looking for a new camera!
 
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