Low light dance photography Slow sexy dancing and dimly lit rooms go together like two people having a slow sexy dance. However, a good rule of thumb is that if it is dark enough that you need a flash, it's dark enough that using a flash would be obnoxious. Fortunately, in the past few years camera technology has progressed to the point that even a fairly basic setup can get photos in light that would have been all but impossible in the film era, and which not long ago would have required gear that was out of the price range of most people. What do I mean by “low light”? A common exposure setting at Friday Night Blues is ISO 6400, f/1.8 at 1/10 second. 1) Camera I'll try to bog down in specifics of equipment. Unless you don't yet have a camera, and just happen to be reading to help you decide what gear to buy to take pictures at next month's blues exchange or tango workshop, you've got what you got and you need to make it work. There are certain things that you want in your camera system for this type of photography: clean high ISO sensitivity, image stabilization and fast glass. I will say that this is one area where us Pentax photographers actually have an advantage over the Canon and Nikon crowd. Not only do even the entry level bodies have excellent noise performance at high ISO, but with in-body image stabilization, even the 25 year old f/1.4 50mm we got off of Uncle Joe's old K1000 is stabilized, while the image stabilized Canon or Nikon lenses are only f/2.8. 2) Lens If you're shooting with an APS sensor camera, the ideal focal length most of the time will be about 30mm, which works out very close to the 50mm FOV on 35mm film gear. If you're photographing dancers, you'll usually want pictures of their whole body, and with any lenses much longer, if someone is far enough away to see them head to toe, chances are there will be somebody else in the way. That being said, one of my best dance photos ever was taken with my 77/1.8, and the cheapest source of fast lenses are the 50mm standards from the film era. Even though high ISO performance keeps improving the end result isn't that you use slower lenses, you just end up shooting in darker rooms. The difference between f/1.8 and f/1.4 is 1/6 vs 1/10 or 1/10 vs 1/15 second. Two thirds of a stop doesn't sound like much, but when you're right on the threshold of a fast enough shutter speed to get a clean enough shot, it can, and does, make all the difference. 3) Monopod The one piece of gear that can make a tremendous difference, and which isn't terribly expensive is a monopod. Yes, it is possible to get clean shots, hand held at 1/10 second, even 1/6 second. But when I started using a monopod, my keeper ratio went up by a factor of ten. Yes, a tripod is even more stable, but there isn't generally room to set one up at dances, and once you do, it's a lot harder to switch positions to photograph someone else. A maglight belt holder costs about $5 and is a very handy way to carry a monopod with a ball head when you aren't actually shooting with it. 4) Shoot in raw When you are pushing the performance envelope of your gear, you cannot afford to throw away any advantage. JPEGS save space by throwing away information that they don't think you need. Also, the processor in the computer on your desk is many times more powerful than the one in your camera. Post processing software is improving all the time, and a raw file that was barely salvageable two years ago, might clean up reasonably well today. 5) Choose your vantage point The light at dances is almost never uniform. Some places will have more light than others. Position yourself that the side of the dancers that you're shooting is in the light, but also try to be aware of the background. Unless you're going for a self portraiture series, try not to shoot directly into a mirror, or glass window. Likewise try to avoid shooting directly into lights, or towards uglier parts of the room. 6) Know the music and the dance People don't dance to metronomes. The music in most songs goes through several changes. There are times when dancers are more likely to do a special move, or just hold still for a second or two. It really helps to know when this is going to happen. If you don't already know the style of dancing that you're photographing, spend some time watching and listening. Practice anticipating when people are going to do something interesting. 7) Pre-focus Even the best auto-focus systems are going to have trouble when the room is too dark to easily read a newspaper. If you just press the shutter and wait for the camera to focus, by the time it gets focus, the dancers will be long done with what ever you're trying to photograph. Pre-focus on the dancers, or if it's a form that they move around, pick a spot where they will be and focus on that. Then, lock out auto-focus, so that when you press the shutter, the picture will be instantly taken. Sometimes it's too dark to focus. Just as a flash would bother people, so can an auto-focus assist light shining in their face. Even with a split prism viewfinder, when it's too dark to auto-focus, it's also often too dark to manually focus. Sometimes you can have success using live view, especially if it has a high magnification mode as a focusing aid. Unfortunately, the screen updates tend to be too slow to work with most dancers. When I can't focus the camera by normal means, I simply estimate the distance, set it by the gauge on the lens, take my picture, hope for the best, and occasionally chimp the result to check. 8)Know your gear Oftentimes cameras have an “extended ISO” mode that doesn't actually increase the sensitivity of their sensor. It usually just does some math on the raw data to make it seem like you're shooting at a higher ISO, when what you're really doing is underexposing, and the camera is doing its best to correct it in post processing. 9) Set reasonable expectations for yourself When you're photographing moving people, in a room that's too dark to read, much less focus, your lens is wide open, and you're redlining the sensitivity on your camera, you aren't going to get photos that are at a National Geographic degree of sharpness. On the other hand, just getting a recognizable photograph of someone dancing in that light is a miracle of modern engineering, and that noisy, motion blurred picture may be the only recognizable photo that anyone has ever gotten of your friend dancing.