I have a music concert to shoot this evening at my wifes school in their gymnasium. I thought it would be a good time to test out the auto ISO function on my D3. Most of the shots are wide angle to close ensembles so the 24 -70 makes the most sense to me.

With the camera set to manual on auto ISO what shutter speeds and f stops would you think would work out best under these circumstances? From past experience the best way to achieve WB is to use the WB preset on a grey card.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Al B

It all depends on the lighting, you will want to shoot fast enough to stop action. Don't do what I did the first time I shot with mine, which is to iso 6400 unnecessarily as you will introduce noise that you don't need. I got away with iso 800 and 1600 at a jazz concert last week, although I am still practicing Good luck.

Fstr. wrote:
It all depends on the lighting, you will want to shoot fast enough to stop action. Don't do what I did the first time I shot with mine, which is to iso 6400 unnecessarily as you will introduce noise that you don't need. I got away with iso 800 and 1600 at a jazz concert last week, although I am still practicing Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestion, although I am hoping to use the auto ISO function so if I set in manual the speed to 1/200 of a second at F5/6 hopefully the auto ISO will react accordingly to give me good enough results. The lighting is unfortunately primarily fluorescent.

Al B

I find that theatrical lighting can be very tricky for AE. You spent quite a lot on a D3 to get, among other things, world class hi ISO low noise performance. The D3, when properly exposed, at 6400 will yield files that can be enlarged to 24x26."

Auto ISO just lets the camera's computer introduce one more uncertainly. Set the ISO at 6400, the shutter at 1/200 and adjust the F stop to "expose right" on the histogram while checking the excellent LCD image.

Then if there's not enough light then consider setting the shutter speed to 1/100 because 70mm on FF isn't very "long" and/if the "musicians" are sitting down they won't be moving much. I have very good success at 1/125 and 70mm with fast moving dancers.