================ Lenses: For most photographers, their largest equipment investment is in glass. Every lens design is a tradeoff between speed (widest aperture), sharpness, bokeh, cost, size, durability, features, focus range, zoom range, and a myriad of other things where improving one characteristic will negatively impact at least one other. I can say with almost certainty that the lens that came with your camera will not work for low light dance photography. Kit lenses are generally designed to be inexpensive while meeting the goals of the specifications that the marketing department deems important. Those specifications tend to have a lot more to do with zoom range, and a lot less to do with speed and sharpness. The things that you will care about are focal length, maximum aperture, sharpness, bokeh, image stabilization and price. Autofocus and auto exposure can be convenient in some situations, but are of only secondary importance. ----------------------- focal length: Most photographs of social dance will be done from fairly close. Unless the dancefloor is nearly empty, or you are from far above the dance floor, you will need to be close so that other dancers won't be in your way. Almost all of my available light dance photos are with either my 31mm or my 50mm lenses which would equate to 49 or 75mm with a "full frame" system. The shorter your lens, the more depth of field you will have, though you may have to crop more to get the image you want. ----------------------- maximum aperture: The bigger the maximum aperture (smaller the number of the f/stop) the more light your lens will let in. However, the bigger the aperture you shoot at, the less depth of field you will have. But do note that while you can stop a f/1.4 or even a f/1.2 lens down to f/1.8, f/2 or even f/16 to get greater depth of field, you cannot open an f/3.5 lens up to f/1.8 or f/1.4. When I bought my FA31/1.8, I didn't think that the 2/3 of a stop between it and f/1.4 would make a big difference. When I got my FA50/1.4 I learned that when shooting dancers the difference between 1/10 second and 1/15 second exposure times was huge. Below 1/30 second, any improvement in shutter speed is noticable in final image quality when shooting dancers, even people dancing slowly. Do note that as sensor speeds double, you will be able to shoot at f/2 where you used to need f/1.4. Also note that to shoot at f/4 where you shoot at f/1.4 would take 3 stops (1.4->2->2.8->4), or eight times the sesnsor speed. To use an f/4 zoom where you currently use an f/1.4 prime would require increasing the maximum ISO of your camera from 3200 to 24,000. If sensors improvements match Moore's law, this should be possible in about five years time. ----------------------- sharpness: In ideal situations, especially with high resolution sensors, the lens is the limiting factor for image sharpness. Most DSLR sensors these days, will outresolve all but the very best lenses. However, low light dance photography is far from ideal conditions. The shots are taken at slow shutter speeds, often hand held, almost never on a tripod, and even if there is no camera motion blur, the dancers are moving, and their motion over the 1/10 of a second of exposure is often orders of magnitude more than the resolution of either the sensor or the lens. ----------------------- bokeh: In short, bokeh is a description of how nice the out of focus areas of a photograph will look. When you are shooting at very wide apertures, with very narrow depth of field, there will be a lot that is out of focus, and therefore the quality of bokeh could be very important. However, with everything else that needs to be traded off in these conditions, bokeh tends to be a case of taking what your lens gives you. ----------------------- zoom or prime: Zoom lenses are more convenient than primes. If your subject moves in closer, you can zoom out wider, if they move away, or you want to shoot someone further away, you can zoom in on them and not need to crop the frame as radically in post processing. The problem is that designing lenses is hard, and making a zoom lens is complicated. I don't know of any quality zoom lenses that are faster than f/2.8, and those are both large and expensive. If you shoot with a zoom, chances are you'll also need a flash. ----------------------- image stabilization : If you are hand holding your camera in low light, then image stabilization can make a huge difference in the sharpness of your images. If you are using a monopod, it will still help a lot. If you have Pentax, Olympus or Sony equipment, then you're set. The image stabilization is in the body and it will work with any lens that fits on your camera. I don't know of any Canon lenses faster than f/2.8 with image stabilization. The fastest that I can find in an appropriate range is the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 which goes for about $1,000. I can't find any Nikon VR lenses faster than f/3.5. ====================== Other accessories: ---------------------- monopod: I was so impressed at how well the image stabilization on my DSLR worked, I didn't think that I needed a monopod. I was wrong. When I first tried using a monopod my percentage of photos that were keepers went up by about a factor of four. I use my monopod with a manfrotto quick release ball head. I prefer a pan head on a tripod, but on a monopod the pan head doesn't make nearly as much sense. For me, a critical specification of a monopod is its collapsed length. First of all, I want it to fit in my camera bag without sticking out. Second of all, I like to do a lot of my photography of dancers from close to the floor. I was able to find two monopods that were both sturdy enough to work, and which would collapse to small enough to fit in my pack. Gitzo makes a very nice one that sells for about $220 at the local camera shop. I've been very pleased, however, with the Benro MC-66 that I bought off the net for about $80. ---------------------- Tripod: A tripod would be much more stable than an equivalent monopod. Using a tripod would make up for lack of image stabilization, and would probably give much sharper pictures than would using a monopod. There is, however, almost never enough space to set one up at a dance. It would be obtrusive, bring attention to you, distracting the dancers from their dancing, and would almost certainly get in the way. Tripods are also a lot harder to move around and reposition than monopods, making it tougher to change your position for shooting other dancers, someplace else on the floor. ---------------------- split prism focusing screen: I absolutely love my katzeye focusing screens. They make it possible to reliably manually focus my cameras. However, the light available at blues dancing, is not really enough to make use of the split prism portion of the screen. I do think that the microprism ring around the split prism does help, but it is of secondary utility. Focusing in the dark inherently involves guesswork and luck. ---------------------- ---------------------- /////////////////// full frame: dynamic range