blues_photo_comments.txt 090930 0100 comments and notes: Note that this is about digital photography, primarily DSLRs. ---------------------- Reading this article won't instantly make you an expert at shooting dancers in low light. It will give you techniques to practice and things to think about when shooting in difficult situations. Getting good results requires knowing what your equipment will, and won't, do, and getting a lot of practice at using it. Joe MercierLarry, nice article. I might add though under the monopod and tripod sections about not using IS in those cases for cameras using in-lens IS. I have Canon IS (in lens) and there using IS mounted will make the images blurrier WITH IS because the gyro movement in the lens is then vibrating the lens and camera with now place to go. The IS needs the lens to have the play of handheld to stabilize the image. Mounted it's shaking on the mount... On Canon anyway... about an hour ago · Delete David BednoI look forward to reading the parts about technique, as opposed to just equipment. about an hour ago · Delete Larry ColenI know that Pentax suggests not using shake reduction when the camera is mounted to a tripod. I don't think that it's an issue with a monopod. I also know some people have done tests and not had a problem. I think that it has something to do with resonant frequencies and coupling. about an hour ago · Delete Scott AtwoodIn the zoom vs. prime section, I wouldn't be so equivocal. Primes win, no contest, for available light dance photography. As you point out, the fastest available zoom lenses are large, heavy, very expensive, and still 1 1/3 to 2 stops slower than much cheaper, much sharper prime lenses. And given that you are probably moving around the dancefloor anyway as a photographer, "zooming with your feet" isn't such a big disadvantage. 43 minutes ago · Delete Scott AtwoodYou mention briefly that one of your fast primes has a reputation for being soft at the edges when shot wide open, which is a common criticism of fast primes. I would argue that while that may make a difference when shooting flat test charts in test labs, it is completely irrelevant for available light dance photography, since there is probably little of interest near the edges of the frame, and given the razor-thin DOF we're working with, most stuff is probably out of focus anyway. Scott AtwoodI would very much like to seem some discussion about focus. Given the very small depth of fields, getting good focus on your subject becomes even more critical, but given the very low lighting, auto focus systems struggle to find focus, and even with a good focusing screen, manual focus can be a challenge as well. Autofocus assist illumination systems are nearly as disruptive as flashes and probably ought to be disabled. To the extent that it is possible to get good focus, it important to choose your subject appropriately, a hand, one face, etc., since you can't possibly squeeze in the entire dance couple into the narrow DOF. 34 minutes ago · Delete Larry ColenI'm actually writing about focus in the technique section, this very minute. I don't, I'm afraid, actually have the sigma 30/1.4. I bought one on ebay, but it was broken in shipment, and I never found one at that good of a price again. I would have been willing to buy it for cheap and get it repaired, but fedex took it away and I never found out what happened to it. 20 minutes ago · Delete John O'HalloranMostly good, but I think you need to cut down the discussion of Pentax cameras. Yes image stabilization in camera to use cheap older lens is good point. Also, no need to name specific brands of monopods or ball heads (unless the brand is only with a quick release.) Larry ColenJohn, You make valid points about brands in some contexts. If I were to post this article to a Pentax site, then I'd make it more pentax centric. For another site, I might make it less so, but until someone gives me something else to shoot with for a while, I don't have any experience with anything else. The benro was such an awesome deal at 1/3 the cost of the only other monopod that met my specifications, but still hard to find, I figured that it was worth mentioning. Scott AtwoodIn the section on colored lights, you say that when shooting subjects with saturated colors, it is possible to clip one color channel while leaving the other channels woefully underexposed. But you give no suggestions about a solution. I assume the solution is to underexpose the shot (to avoid the single channel clipping), but then this underexposes the other channels even further. I suppose another solution would be to post process into B&W if that suits the subject Good point. The best that I can do in these situations is to expose for the channel that has the light. At the rent party, that ends up being "red" because of the orange rope lights and just work with what you've got. That's why my Rent party shots are all very orange, or black and white. It wouldn't be so bad if they used green lights, because there are twice as many green sensor sites as red or blue (i.e. half the sites are green) because the human eye sees green the best. In theory you could put a complementary colored filter over the lens, but if you had enough light to do that, you wouldn't be reading my thoughts on shooting in the dark. With flowers, the other channels aren't so underexposed. Larry, Some comments and corrections. > I am constantly talking about how you should shoot for the raw data, > and correct everything in post processing. If that is the case, then > setting the color balance at the time you shoot should not make any > difference. It was discussed earlier here on the list (probably about a year ago) mostly between Godfrey and myself that the way exponometry works or to be exact, - programmed (at least in some cameras, - for sure in *ist DS and Godfrey was mentioning either K10D or K20D at that point), is that in some combination of the WB and the actual light, the photographs can be underexposed. This happens, e.g. when you shoot with the daylight WB in the room with tungsten lights: uncorrected images are underexposed (after WB corrected). The mechanism responsible for that is similar to what you describe in your writeup in the situation of colored lights: one channel dominates, and the other two are underexposed. So, it is nice to have the right ball-park setting for WB. Having it precise might be an overkill in case you are not trying to get just 1-2-3 shots, but a bunch of them at different parts of the dance floor. The variance of the light throughout the room may prove your efforts to be unreasonable, especially if you are going to correct WB in post-processing anyway. Also, - if you try to write a universal guide, - keep in mind that your reference to the green button makes it very narrow-oriented. It's Pentax-centric, and even with Pentax not applicable to all cameras. Igor Following the discussion about exposure and WB, I was skeptical that WB setting could affect exposure metering, as in a SLR the meter cells are independent from the sensor. So I've tested it on my K20D. I've taken three Av exposures in tungsten light (one with Auto WB, another one with Daylight WB and the last one with Tungsten WB). As expected, shutter speed was the same and the histograms of the three shots look identical. Dario As a side note, I believe the possible underexposure that someone noticed when shooting under tungsten light can be due to reaching the lower limit of the meter range. Once you're there, the camera stops incrementing the shutter speed for getting a proper exposure in dim light. Be aware that going below the lower limit of the meter is common when shooting shows such as music indoors and the like. Dario