The University of Calgary is mounting a two week exposition of student work. This is a venue for the better student directors, writers, lighting designers, set designers and costume designers to show their skills. The plays are sometimes student written and sometimes from the selection of great works of the world. The faculty teaching staff only provide guidance and do not impose their "professional" point of view on the shows.
I have been shooting previous productions in manual mode for exposure but now am trying to shift to auto-exposure (Tv / Shutter Priority mode) but have not yet nailed the exposures consistently. Partly this is because Canon exposure systems do not choose to preserve highlights. When I shot Nikon, auto-exposure was very significantly more reliable with brightness retention.
Here are a few representative images of this year's production (currently in progress - this is the final week). C&C welcome.
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Edited by tonyfield on Apr 08, 2008 at 03:00 PM GMT
Are you shooting for the University? If so I that is some awesome gear they give out to you. I wish MY university let me shoot with a Canon 1D MKIII or a 5D!
Nice set of photos.
How do you get the EXIF on the border? Is it a manual process or do you have an action that strips the necessary fields out of the EXIF data for that photo?
f/6.3 and 6400 ISO? nice shots. would have shot the first one a stop faster and at 3200, but can't really argue with the results. BTW, i have a lot more luck in manual when shooting theatre as well. Isn't theatre fun to photograph?
I guess that lower ISO could be used - however I chose high ISO simply to increase depth of field and/or use higher shutter speed. Of course, there is a corresponding decrease colour quality - but I am quite willing to accept this side effect. The increased noise is also visible but that does not seem to detract from the images in spite of the fact that I rarely use noise removal. This is certainly my opinion knowing that most folks have a complete aversion to any digital noise.
Yes, high speed primes are useful for theatre in particular for low light scenes or to limit depth of field. I seldom shoot my high speed lenses for theatre however often need them for dance productions which usually have much darker lighting designs (one to three stops lower than theatre, in general).
Wow, nice, love #2. Nice to be able to shoot with $100k worth of lighting isn't it.
When I shoot theater I usually use one of the programmed modes, but I find that I get consitantly good results only by switching to spot metering. With the dark backgrounds that you usually see, faces get overexposed with other metering modes. These look right on to me, how did you meter them?
Tim Nguyen wrote:
nice shots tony
did you actually get to see the shows?
they were awesome
Hi Tim,
Yes, the shows were very fine indeed. The choice of pieces to present was very good and the acting was quite fine. I seldom watch the actual run - partly because of time pressures and also I seem to get more "involved" with the piece when I am shooting since my attention is completely on the play.
The only play that I wish I had seen as a run is the "Play" by Samuel Beckett since it is essentially all verbal and I missed some of the beautiful monologues while trying to shoot the with the interesting lighting.
Neddie Seagoon wrote:
When I shoot theater I usually use one of the programmed modes, but I find that I get consitantly good results only by switching to spot metering. With the dark backgrounds that you usually see, faces get overexposed with other metering modes. These look right on to me, how did you meter them?
I am switching from manual exposure to shutter priority mode and still getting used to it.
For a given play lighting condition, I select Average, large spot or small spot and am constantly adjusting the exposure compensation to try to avoid overexposure. I find the 1D-III is easier to shoot than the 5D because the spot meter on the 1D-III follows the selected focus point and, of course, I always select the appropriate focus point for the given shot. Wish I still had the Nikons for this type of work.
