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Settings for Theatre lighting on D700

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Louise Vessey

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Hi...

I have had my D700 for about 30 minutes and so far so good....but white balance seems to be an issue with available light. I really want to try this camera out at my shoot tomorrow night (a paid gig so can't mess up). Any suggestions what to set it for to handle the changing lights of theatre. Obviously no flash allowed.

I got the SB900 and it has nailed the exposure spot on on every shot so far...wow!! Now to read the manuals!!
--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
Hopefully you'll get someone responding more knowledgeable than me, but I've had good luck with manually setting WB to about 3200 in the two indoor theaters I've shot in for my daughter. Of course setting it manually off a white card would be more accurate, and I assume you might have a chance to do that since you are getting paid for the gig. It is easy to do on the D700. Shoot raw and if you get close, it is easy to tweak it.
--
Good shooting,

GR
North Carolina
 
It will be no different to what I used on the weekend with the D3. Assuming it is a dance studio concert:

Len: 70-200/2.8
Exposure: Manual 250/2.8
Auto ISO ON
Centre Weighted Metering

Focus: AF-C, No sure what the name is but I used the one where you start on a set point and it follows the action so you can pick your focus point and reframe but maintain focus on a moving object. This mode is incredible. I set the release to Focus priority. Yes this increases the release delay some times but what is the point in taking lots of OOF images?

White Balance: Manual 2940K
Colour Mode: Vivid

Occasionally I would dial in -3ev exposure compensation.









Hope you like

Guy
 
Louise, it would depend on what kind of light there is available (wash, spots etc.) I got some really good tips from guys on this forum a few days ago who will probably give you some good settings to try. I ended up using incandesent and then creating a custom settings file in NX2 and batching all my shots to JPG. The custom settings removed the warm cast perfectly. Ideally shoot a grey card, and do try ISO 3200, f4-worked superbly for me, but you may well have more/less light.
Cheers
wern
 
Thanks for the great tips! The light changes very quickly so I am not sure shooting a grey card would be that much help....it is an actual dress rehearsal so I cannot tell them to stop and start and wait for me to get proper colour balance!!

RAW for sure and I will mostly shoot with my Fuji S5s in jpeg mode like I always have with good results....but hoping the D700 will be even better. I never set the Fuji higher than ISO 1250 so feeling like I can do 3200 is great!!

Great images by the way....those coloured spots can really through things off...even for my Fuji...
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Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
Generally, the rule for theatre (and dance) is to shoot with the camera set to tungsten. This generally gives the proper visual effect that the lighting designer intended. Since you are shooting raw, you can easily make a global edit change to the final white balance in ACR. Select an ISO that allows a shutter speed of 1/125 second or faster (and don't worry about noise) simply to minimize subject motion blur.

This does not always hold - I just shot a theatre performance two days ago that was "lit very cool" and chose a camera white balance of 3400K. On the other hand, I could have left it as tungsten and changed all images to 3400K in ACR. See Hello...Hello in the following link:

http://tphoto.myphotos.cc/tfield/

Here are a few performances shooting notes that are generally applicable to any stage performance - although I wrote it for a fellow requesting info about shooting dance.

http://tphoto.myphotos.cc/info/DanceShootingNotes.pdf
--
tony
http://www.tphoto.ca
 
tony, thanks for the performance shooting notes. Very useful information and verifies my own limited experiences in shooting theatrical dance events.

Just last night I attempted a very low-light shoot with a black walled stage, dark costumes, varied tight colored spots, partially lighted dancers often with the legs and feet four stops brighter than the body and face, and me still using a D200 with only a 50mm 1.4 and a 70-200 VR. Talk about frustrating. I still got a few that I liked, but I keep wondering why haven't I already take the leap for the D700 (beside the price when you add the necessary 24-70 f2.8!)

Regards,
Richard
 
you don't need to follow white balance!

The lighting is all based around tungsten Around 3000-3200K, I used just under 3000K to keep it warm rather than cool.
 
Thanks for the great advice again...

I plan to shoot the D700 with my Tamron 28-75 2.8 for the overall long shots and the S5 will have the 70-200VR on a monopod for the close ups....I find noise more pronounced in the long shots where you can see more of the background so I think it makes sense to use the D700 for those...

I will shoot RAW on the Nikon and Jpeg as always on the Fujis :-)

So far I am really loving this new machine!

I have my first studio session with it in an hour as well. Busy day....camera is getting a good break in....
--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
Ok...just adjusting to my new workflow. Why do people shoot both RAW and jpeg? If shooting RAW is just as easy then why end up with 2 jpegs once the RAW image is processed to another jpeg?

Just curious....was always just a jpeg shooter....

Now this theatre company want a few images for a newspaper ad tomorrow morning (shoot is tonight). By shooting both RAW and JPEG does it really save time to fire one or two off to them as straight jpegs versus a processed RAW to Jpeg?
--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
Louise Vessey said:
Now this theatre company want a few images for a newspaper ad
tomorrow morning (shoot is tonight). By shooting both RAW and JPEG
does it really save time to fire one or two off to them as straight
jpegs versus a processed RAW to Jpeg?
Click to expand...
Not really a saving. Shoot raw only. For quick review and selection, use a browser like Photo Mechanic. For quick review and quick raw processing, use CS4 Bridge with ACR. The new Bridge is MUCH faster than that of CS3
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tony
http://www.tphoto.ca
 
I use CS3 and Bridge and it has it's shortcomings (freezes from time to time, forgets preferences etc). I find it slow to open up my jpeg files but it seems RAW is about the same...go figure!!

I was considering upgrading to CS4 but may switch over to Mac from PC first...so many changes around here!!

I will shoot just RAW....it is pretty quick to search through them. I use irfanview which also shows me nice quick previews.

Off I go...wish me luck!! Wish it wasn't pouring rain out....
--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
This is a nice little utility that will extract the jpeg from RAW images and place them in a folder it will even resize the images if you require it.....ideal I think if you shoot in RAW but may need to send a few quick images to your client for a preview.

Details are half way down this page... http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/2027

hope it helps
Dave
--
pbase supporter at http://www.pbase.com/dav4184
for equipment see profile
 
If one is shooting in RAW, why does getting the white balance right at the time of shooting matter..? I never really understood this, but lots of people seem to do it, so I suspect I might be missing something.
 
The only reason for getting the colour balance reasonable while shooting is that the camera's LCD display will be readable (i.e. no major colour cast) and that, when images are loaded into your image browser (or ACR) it is initially displayed with reasonable colour. Of course, final balances should be made in your raw processor.
--
tony
http://www.tphoto.ca
 
Yep...did it...shot the whole thing RAW...never did that before. The curious thing is that the camera stated around 400 RAW images available on my 8GB CF card. When I finished there was about 80 left....I am now downloading 566 RAW files...I guess it really depends on the detail in the scene as to how many images fit or not??

D700 really was a dream camera to work with in a theatre setting. I have shot for this big theatre company for about 7 years now and they have been very happy with what I have given them....just wait til they see this bunch... Unbelievable IQ at 3200. These images are just blowing my old Olympus E10 shots (what i used the first year I shot theatre) out of the water!! I should ask for a raise!!

Guess I should also download the images from my Fuji eh?

I love this camera!!

--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
 
Well, I don't shoot RAW and JPG for that reason, I only end up with 2 jpg copies but on a D3 you can shoot JPG to the second card as an instant backup.

I have shot some jobs where I just burnt the jpgs off for the client at the end of the job but I had RAWs incase the client wanted some higher quality adjustments made to some images.

Cheers

Guy
Louise Vessey said:
Ok...just adjusting to my new workflow. Why do people shoot both RAW
and jpeg? If shooting RAW is just as easy then why end up with 2
jpegs once the RAW image is processed to another jpeg?

Just curious....was always just a jpeg shooter....

Now this theatre company want a few images for a newspaper ad
tomorrow morning (shoot is tonight). By shooting both RAW and JPEG
does it really save time to fire one or two off to them as straight
jpegs versus a processed RAW to Jpeg?
--
Louise Vessey,
PEI, Canada http://www.lightandvision.com
Click to expand...
 
These are repeasted in one of my other replies but I didn't detail the ISO

ISO 3600



While I haven't taken it 'large' I have done a quick 6x8 of it and you can't see any noise in the print.

Both of these are ISO6400, why wouldn't you?





Guy
 
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