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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · System recommendations for dance photography? | |
I shoot a bit of dance, and use a D810 and various prime lenses (24/1.8G, 50/1.4D, 58/1.4G, 85/1.8D, Tamron 85, Zeiss 2/135 APO), usually around f/2, between ISO800 and 1600 in RAW to preserve as much dynamic range as possible for post processing. I shoot in manual because the lighting doesn't change much, especially in rehearsal. There will be shows with changing lights, but I find it faster to alter my manual settings than to rely on an automatic mode especially with so many bright point sources of lights around. I also use the battery grip so I don't have to worry about battery life, and I have good ergonomics for portrait orientation shots.
I've used an E-M1 along with the 75/1.8, 25/1.4PL and 12-40/2.8 for dance, and agree that it's not very good at it. I recently tried an X-T2 with the 90/2 LM and the 16/1.4, and it's a terrible camera for dance: the hype behind its supposed good AF performance is completely unbelievable.
The D810 is actually very good with one big fault: the buffer is a little too small and clears a little too slowly. This is with single-shot, but with less than a second between button presses. AF is good in AF-C and d9 mode, with lenses fine-turned to the lighting environment I'm shooting in. It's not 100%, but it's far more than 50%. I've also shot the D500, and except for the lack of fast wide angle primes, it's really fantastic, especially its full-width AF array.
And I'm sure a comparable Canon system would do just as well, but the most important factors to your success are:
1. Practice. Know your equipment cold, and how it behaves under various circumstances. For example, most dance is shot under artificial light, and AF will be affected by that. Know how to move your AF focus point quickly and efficiently for how you work. For example, I mix portrait and landscape orientations a lot, so having something like Nikon's separate settings for each is useful. With the D500, there are a lot more focusing points to move through and a wider area, so I had to be aware of that and deal with that in a different way than the D810. Same comments about your exposure mode: while I use manual and it works for me, you'll have to figure out how your preferred exposure mode interacts with the light in your situations.
2. Know the dance form. Go to rehearsals, and just watch: don't start shooting immediately. Try to know the flow of the choreography so you know where the best angles are and when the interesting moments will be. The great thing about rehearsals is that they repeat the same thing lots of time, so you get many chances at the same moment (though they may not do it full out each time).
Be prepared to run around and get in different positions to get your shots. Don't rely on continuous shooting to get your moment, because chances are almost certain that it won't get it. There is a right moment to shoot, and a high frame rate is just to get the stuff after the peak moment. I like to limit my continuous shots to 3 with the in-camera setting. Lois Greenfield shoots with a Hassy V-system to get her studio shots (which are not posed as the dancers are moving continuously), and she basically gets 1 shot to get her moment.
Watch your background clutter. Studio backgrounds are notoriously cluttered, so you may not have very many angles to work with in a studio. Stages tend to be cleaner, but that depends on the set design. You can incorporate many of these clutter elements into your compositions.
Camera (sound) noise is a tough one. If you're shooting in a performance, there's not much you can do besides using a sound blimp to mask your camera noise. Rehearsals in general are pretty noisy. Different cameras have different sounds, and their quiet mode (except for true silent modes like the mirrorless cameras with the full electronic shutters) aren't really that quiet, so it's something you'll have to test for yourself. The D810 is surprisingly quiet, and the D500 is pretty noisy.
Good luck!
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