I've recently started specialising in live music photography and have been getting some positive feedback. However, tonight I met a new challenge which has been causing frustration.
I have been to a flamenco show to take pictures and they were not up to my usual standard at all. There are several problems:
1. The venue is dark and crowded. The staff were lovely and gave me a good vantage point.
2. flamenco dancers move extremely quickly and often unpredictably
I'm using a Nikon d5200 with a 50mm prime lens. My settings are 800-2000 ISO, 1.8 aperture, and variations of shutter speed from 125 up to 400. I have tried setting a back button to focus, as well as trying the usual half press method.
My problem is that a lot of the images, especially of the female dancers, are out of focus. Due to slow camera/SD card saving and the speed of the movement I'm trying to capture.
I would welcome any tips or technical advice. Especially as I have been invited back tomorrow night.
I'll post some examples tomorrow, as soon as I extract them from the camera.
Can't really help you I am sorry. I can only think of lots of reasons why it would be an extremely difficult situation to take the photos in without a flash which would to some extent kill the atmosphere anyway.
Brendan Maunder ( @agima ) springs to mind here because I remember him doing some dance photography (and he is much cleverer than I am!)
I would imagine that the low light would: make auto focusing slow/difficult; not enable a fast enough shutter speed to reduce camera shake and movement blur; and the large aperture would give a very shallow dof, all of which are going to give blurred images. But I am sure you knew that anyway.
I can only imagine that upping your ISO and possibly manually focusing are your only options, which of course would introduce more noise, and you would have to refocus frequently if the dancers are moving about a lot. Again the shallow dof caused by the wide aperture is going to be a problem here.
As for the slow camera/saving if you are shooting in bursts then maybe shooting JPEGs rather than RAW would help, but don't forget to think about white balance if you do that.
hmmm............ have you thought about taking up landscape photography?
Yes I do a lot of dance photography and infact just come home from one. :)
Up your ISO to 6400 which will give you the flexibility to make your shutter speed. Now having said that I dont know how much noise you will get at that so you will have to make the call.
Also at f1.8 the images is going to be very soft very quickly so you need to get the shot away as soon as it get focus or it will be out.
I also use flash but in some cases that is not allowed but worth the ask.
Igbo be good to use smaller aperture and accept some blurring that would capture a sense of movement.
Or use a defused flash directed at a wall or ceiling!
Let me know if it works.
Of course you should be trying to capture something they call 'duende' or spirit of the moment!
@bighotch@jantan@agima Thank you so much for all for your advice. I've been busy taking photos but I have read all your messages and they were extremely helpful. I went back to the flamenco place tonight and have some much better images due to your advice. I will post them as soon as I extract them from the camera.
Thanks again. I can't believe how helpful the people of 365 are.
A couple of the Flamenco shots. The rest are slowly being processed and uploaded to my website, where the image size and resolution leaves a lot to be desired. http://www.chloejackson.co.uk/flamenco-at-cardomomo
I'm afraid I'm late but they're pretty good. I'm from Spain and recently I went to Madrid and went to a flamenco show. I just made a lot of improvisation because the place was too dark and I didn't know what to expect.
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Brendan Maunder ( @agima ) springs to mind here because I remember him doing some dance photography (and he is much cleverer than I am!)
I would imagine that the low light would: make auto focusing slow/difficult; not enable a fast enough shutter speed to reduce camera shake and movement blur; and the large aperture would give a very shallow dof, all of which are going to give blurred images. But I am sure you knew that anyway.
I can only imagine that upping your ISO and possibly manually focusing are your only options, which of course would introduce more noise, and you would have to refocus frequently if the dancers are moving about a lot. Again the shallow dof caused by the wide aperture is going to be a problem here.
As for the slow camera/saving if you are shooting in bursts then maybe shooting JPEGs rather than RAW would help, but don't forget to think about white balance if you do that.
hmmm............ have you thought about taking up landscape photography?
Yes I do a lot of dance photography and infact just come home from one. :)
Up your ISO to 6400 which will give you the flexibility to make your shutter speed. Now having said that I dont know how much noise you will get at that so you will have to make the call.
Also at f1.8 the images is going to be very soft very quickly so you need to get the shot away as soon as it get focus or it will be out.
I also use flash but in some cases that is not allowed but worth the ask.
Or use a defused flash directed at a wall or ceiling!
Let me know if it works.
Of course you should be trying to capture something they call 'duende' or spirit of the moment!
Thanks again. I can't believe how helpful the people of 365 are.
http://www.chloejackson.co.uk/flamenco-at-cardomomo
Thank you. I think I followed all the advice...
I took lots of pictures but I only like this one:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCrngMyJrss/U1RiBz4i3xI/AAAAAAAABHM/hNR9yIVj-f0/s1600/_DSC0500.jpg
I'm not very into flamenco though, but maybe in the future I could attend another show to get better ones.