7D settings for stage/theater photography?

[dmm698475]

I am a longtime user of a 400d and now I have a new 7D.

I am going to shoot my daughters high school play on stage and seek advice on good settings to try on the 7D. Full stage lighting, no flash.

Here are my lens choices:

Sigma 30mm F1.4
Sigma 50-150mm I F2.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 85mm F1.8
Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS
Canon 55-250mm F4-5.6 IS

I will be at the dress rehersal and will have free range for where I setup and move about the audience area for close up and distance shots.

Here are some sample shots that I took last year with my 400D and 55-250mm + 17-55mm lens.

http://davidmphoto.smugmug.com/Lake-Braddock-Secondary-School/Thoroughly-Modern-Millie/

I am thinking of going with the following 2 camera setup:

Canon 7D w/ 85mm F1.8:

TV 1/125, auto ISO, AWB, spot metering, center point single shot focus, JPEG (Lightroom does not currently support RAW well.), auto light optimizer OFF, highlight tone priority OFF.

Canon 400D w/ 17-55mm F2.8 IS:

AV F4, ISO 800 or 1600, AWB, partial metering, center point single shot focus, RAW.

comments and recommendations?

 

[Michael Kaplan]

I would still shoot RAW. If you don't want to process them now, you can use the free program IJFR (Instant Jpeg From Raw) and extract the embedded jpegs but stage lighting is sometimes tricky and RAW could save you. I shoot 100% RAW and although DPP may not have the best workflow, it still is the best program to get the best quality out of the RAW file.

If they are moving then 1/125 is not fast enough. Don't be afraid to shoot ISO1600 and even 3200 with the 7D. I have shot a local charity show every year for years and have always shot at ISO 800 to 3200 as needed with all my xxD cameras and although they get better with each generation, they have all turned out great. More recently mostly with my 70-200 f/2.8L IS. I find the zoom better than a fixed lens so you can frame better and not have to move around as much and disturb either the audience or the performers. When i was close to the stage I used my 17-55. When I first started with the 10D it was the 50 f/1.8 then the 1.4 but soon after raised the ISOs then went to zooms. Much better. Your focus and image setting seem fine to me. You seem to have done a very nice job from your link from last year so I'd say just do more of the same.

Here are a few of my pics from over the years.

2009 - 50D



2008 - 40D



2007 - 20D



2006 - 20D



2005 - 20D



2004 - 10D



2003 - 10D

I am a longtime user of a 400d and now I have a new 7D.

I am going to shoot my daughters high school play on stage and seek advice on good settings to try on the 7D. Full stage lighting, no flash.

Here are my lens choices:

Sigma 30mm F1.4
Sigma 50-150mm I F2.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 85mm F1.8
Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS
Canon 55-250mm F4-5.6 IS

I will be at the dress rehersal and will have free range for where I setup and move about the audience area for close up and distance shots.

Here are some sample shots that I took last year with my 400D and 55-250mm + 17-55mm lens.

http://davidmphoto.smugmug.com/Lake-Braddock-Secondary-School/Thoroughly-Modern-Millie/

I am thinking of going with the following 2 camera setup:

Canon 7D w/ 85mm F1.8:

TV 1/125, auto ISO, AWB, spot metering, center point single shot focus, JPEG (Lightroom does not currently support RAW well.), auto light optimizer OFF, highlight tone priority OFF.

Canon 400D w/ 17-55mm F2.8 IS:

AV F4, ISO 800 or 1600, AWB, partial metering, center point single shot focus, RAW.

comments and recommendations?

--
Michael Kaplan
http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan
See my profile for equipment list

 

[jrarsenault]

I can understand the rational for both lens choices... but I wonder if you would be better off with the Sigma 50-150 F/2.8 rather than the focal limited 17-55mm. The Sigma would provide you with more flexibility because of its focal length.

Best of lluck with your shoot!

I am a longtime user of a 400d and now I have a new 7D.

I am going to shoot my daughters high school play on stage and seek advice on good settings to try on the 7D. Full stage lighting, no flash.

Here are my lens choices:

Sigma 30mm F1.4
Sigma 50-150mm I F2.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 85mm F1.8
Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS
Canon 55-250mm F4-5.6 IS

I will be at the dress rehersal and will have free range for where I setup and move about the audience area for close up and distance shots.

Here are some sample shots that I took last year with my 400D and 55-250mm + 17-55mm lens.

http://davidmphoto.smugmug.com/Lake-Braddock-Secondary-School/Thoroughly-Modern-Millie/

I am thinking of going with the following 2 camera setup:

Canon 7D w/ 85mm F1.8:

TV 1/125, auto ISO, AWB, spot metering, center point single shot focus, JPEG (Lightroom does not currently support RAW well.), auto light optimizer OFF, highlight tone priority OFF.

Canon 400D w/ 17-55mm F2.8 IS:

AV F4, ISO 800 or 1600, AWB, partial metering, center point single shot focus, RAW.

comments and recommendations?

 

[Tiny Tim]

I haven't done much stage shooting but personally I'd shoot raw with manual exposure and a single selected focus point, perhaps with expansion enabled. If subjects were static then I'd use One Shot AF (for greater sensitivity/accuracy), but if they were moving a bit it would have to be AI Servo.

Regarding exposure, unless the lighting is changing frequently I would find manual exposure far more suitable. Once set you could pretty much forget it. Using autoexposure is just asking for pain as the dynamic range can be vast and metering could easily be thrown off depending upon framing.

Here's a recent example taken with my 50D (I don't have a 7D) and 85/1.8 lens. This was shot raw and processed in Lightroom with no edits except WB and crop. EXIF is 1/125, f/2, 400 ISO.



Note how autoexposure could so easily vary with that pitch black background, as well as bright glittery backdrop and, in some photos, lights behind the subject too. Why suffer all that pain of fighting autoexposure for every change in composition, if the scene illumination is constant and there is no need for the exposure to change at all. Of course, if the lighting is all over the place then I guess you'd better hope that autoexposure and some fancy exposure compensation twiddling will get you what you need.

Here's another example from the same venue. EXIF is identical to the previous shot and, again, the only edit is WB and crop. Now that mass of black could easily have played tricks on autoexposure, but by shooting manual my exposures were consistent and reliable.



HTH,
Tim.

p.s. Do check the histogram every now and again and also make sure you have blown highlight warnings enabled and look for them when reviewing shots.

 

[dmm698475]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

If I am to shoot Manual. What is the best way to set the aperature and shutterspeed initial and thruout the performance and changing lighting. Histogram? Blown Highlights enabled on the LCD screen? What procedure do you follow during the performance to keep consistancy?

If I am in Manual. How does AutoISO work? What ISO gets selected or should I just set it to 1600 and forget autoISO?

See picture below. I did shoot this one in manual mode. But I did not get the color or whitebalance exactly right. It is too purple/yellow. This pic is a straight RAW to JPEG convert in lightroom with no extra processing. What should I do with WB especially if I still choose to shoot JPEG.

400D, 55-250mm, 163mm, F5.6, 1/60, ISO800, Manual Mode, 0EV exp bias, RAW.

 

[Tiny Tim]

You want to select a shutter speed that is sufficient to overcome camera shake and also deal with the levels of movement on the stage. e.g. with an 85mm lens and a singer you might be OK with around 1/125 - 1/160 or so. For dancers you'll probably need something more like 1/250 at least, maybe even 1/500 or more.

You want to select an aperture that gives you the DOF you need while allowing the fastest shutter speed and lowest ISO you can get away with while still maintaining sufficient shutter speed. I found f/2 to be perfectly fine with my 85mm lens with individuals. A longer lens (for tighter closeups) or deeper group of people might need a bit more - perhaps f/4.

You'll need to pick an ISO that gives you the exposure you need while satisfying your wishes for shutter speed and aperture. Shutter speed and aperture are your creative choices, which control movement and DOF. ISO is just the thing you need to vary so those choices work.

Perhaps I was fortunate, in that the lighting remained unaltered throughout the performance, and was fairly even across the stage. That made manual exposure an easy choice for me, because once it was set up I was good to go. I did shift things around a little, depending on whether I needed a faster shutter, but the overall exposure level remained pretty constant.

If the lighting is changing all the time then maybe autoexposure or auto ISO would be a better choice. Does the 7D offer true auto ISO when you fix shutter and aperture manually? If so that might be a reasonable approach, but how you meter and how you set exposure compensation depends very much on the overall content of the scene. I don't think there is a "one size fits all" approach if everything is changing continually.

As for colour balance problems, if the stage is in mixed lighting then you simply can't balance everything at the same time. The whole point really is that the lighting team want different colours all over the place so your camera should reflect that. Probably the best thing to do is to shoot in raw with tungsten WB as a starting point, as I assume the lights themselves will be tungsten hotlights. Whatever gels are placed in front of them is simply the colour the crew wants on the stage. There is no point in trying to colour balance out blues, greens, reds, yellows etc. if that's how the stage is intended to look, so use tungsten as a starting point and then adjust to taste from there.

 

[Michael Kaplan]

If the lighting keeps changing you will have a hard time doing manual. You could try Manual with Auto ISO but you will have to keep checking your exposure to make sure all is ok.. What I usually do is run it in Av, fixed ISO and let the speed vary. The reasoning behind that is I keep my aperture wide open so I can get the best speed as most of the time the singers and always the dancers are moving and I want to stop the motion. I start out at ISO800 and move up if I find the speed not high enough. Be careful that it may look great in the LCD but may be motion problems. You have to zoom in on the LCD to check focus and movement blur once in a while. I had that happen once that I thought I had a lot more sharp photos but when i got home and saw it on my scrren there were many more movement OOF problems. Sometimes you just learn the hard way. I was lucky as the show runs 8 nights so I just made changes the next night and got many more keepers.
--
Michael Kaplan
http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan
See my profile for equipment list

 

[Michael Kaplan]

You want to select a shutter speed that is sufficient to overcome camera shake and also deal with the levels of movement on the stage. e.g. with an 85mm lens and a singer you might be OK with around 1/125 - 1/160 or so. For dancers you'll probably need something more like 1/250 at least, maybe even 1/500 or more.

You want to select an aperture that gives you the DOF you need while allowing the fastest shutter speed and lowest ISO you can get away with while still maintaining sufficient shutter speed. I found f/2 to be perfectly fine with my 85mm lens with individuals. A longer lens (for tighter closeups) or deeper group of people might need a bit more - perhaps f/4.

You'll need to pick an ISO that gives you the exposure you need while satisfying your wishes for shutter speed and aperture. Shutter speed and aperture are your creative choices, which control movement and DOF. ISO is just the thing you need to vary so those choices work.

Perhaps I was fortunate, in that the lighting remained unaltered throughout the performance, and was fairly even across the stage. That made manual exposure an easy choice for me, because once it was set up I was good to go. I did shift things around a little, depending on whether I needed a faster shutter, but the overall exposure level remained pretty constant.

You are lucky as the shows I did were all varrying levels, sometimes dim and other times very bright. I couldn't do manual and at the time had no auto ISO at all.

If the lighting is changing all the time then maybe autoexposure or auto ISO would be a better choice. Does the 7D offer true auto ISO when you fix shutter and aperture manually? If so that might be a reasonable approach, but how you meter and how you set exposure compensation depends very much on the overall content of the scene. I don't think there is a "one size fits all" approach if everything is changing continually.

Yes, the 7D has true auto ISO. You are right. If the lighting changes you will have to see what works with your situation.

As for colour balance problems, if the stage is in mixed lighting then you simply can't balance everything at the same time. The whole point really is that the lighting team want different colours all over the place so your camera should reflect that. Probably the best thing to do is to shoot in raw with tungsten WB as a starting point, as I assume the lights themselves will be tungsten hotlights. Whatever gels are placed in front of them is simply the colour the crew wants on the stage. There is no point in trying to colour balance out blues, greens, reds, yellows etc. if that's how the stage is intended to look, so use tungsten as a starting point and then adjust to taste from there.

I agree. Shoot tungston and shoot RAW. most lighting is 3200 degK but some lighting may be at other temps. You don't want to white balance to remove the colors. You want all the colors that the show put on. That is the beauty of shooting a live performance. Also why you don't use flas as it wipes out the colors.

--
Michael Kaplan
http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan
See my profile for equipment list

 

[Steve Hong]

I would concur about the lens choices, but I would switch the lenses on the bodies. I.e. 400D with 85 1.8, and 7D with 17-55 or other lens.

The reason? The 7D has at least 1 more stop of usable ISO than the 400D. You'll need the faster lens on the 400D. This will allow you to increase your shutter speed on both cameras.

Steve

 

[dmm698475]

I would concur about the lens choices, but I would switch the lenses on the bodies. I.e. 400D with 85 1.8, and 7D with 17-55 or other lens.

The reason? The 7D has at least 1 more stop of usable ISO than the 400D. You'll need the faster lens on the 400D. This will allow you to increase your shutter speed on both cameras.

Steve

Thanks for the suggestion. My thinking was that I would be using the 85mm lens farther back in the audience area. I would need the 18M resolution of the 7D for cropping of pictures and better ISO response for the more distant and less light shots.

The 400D with the 17-55mm would be used when I am closer to the stage.

 

[dmm698475]

I have been playing with Manual and Auto ISO. This seems like a good option.

I have set my camera to: Manual, F2.2, 1/125 and AutoISO.

The aperture and shutter remain fixed, but the ISO ranges from 100 to 3200 depending on the light in the shot to keep the exposure histogram in the middle of the graph. This looks like a great option for the theater lighting.

 

[dmm698475]

Thank you all for your advice.

I ended up shooting with my 7D with an 85mm F1.8 setup as follows:

TV Mode 1/160, ISO 1600, 3200 and even 6400. Tungstun WB, spot meter, AF single point, AI Focus.

I used my 400D as a backup with a 17-55 F2.8 and occasionally a sigma 30mm F1.4 lens.

You can view the pictures here:

http://davidmphoto.smugmug.com/Lake-Braddock-Secondary-School/Macbeth-2009/

 

[Russell in France]

A very interesting thread with some great comments. Very pleasing results from Macbeth. I would be proud of those photos.

I've just ordered my 7D and I have my youngsters end of year performances coming in December so now I need to learn.

Cheers, Russell

 

[WaleedEssam]

I always suggest keeping the faster prime on the noisier camera.

So the 400D to have the 85/1.8
And the 7D to have the 17-55/2.8 or the 50-150/2.8

i.e. in the same lighting conditions, and with the same shutter speed, the 400D @ ISO1600 @ f/2 will match the exposure of the 7D @ ISO3200 @ f/2.8

Hope this helps.
Waleed

 

[tocarver]

I say ya did a very admiral job on these!! So how did you find the 7D did in this type of shooting situation? From the look of the images, I think I'll repurchase another 85mm F1.8, great bang for the buck!!

Thanks for posting the images and having the exif info intact.

--
Jerry
http://www.pbase.com/tocarver
Equipment, to date, (+: In profile

 

[Michael Kaplan]

Great job. The photos came out very well. I guess you are happy that the worry was for nothing.
--
Michael Kaplan
http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan
See my profile for equipment list

 

[dmm698475]

I found the 7D to be an excellent performer for theater photography. You can see in my posted link that the shots with the 400D came out significantly worse. The 7D with spot metering and better ISO performance really helps over the 400D. Although the comparison is not completely equal, since I had the 85mm on the 7d and the 17-55 on the 400d.

My keeper rate was very high with the 7D and 85mm. Most of my throwaway shots were due to not capturing the scene or look I wanted and not to bad focus or exposure. I also used a monopod although at 1/160 I am not sure it was needed.

I used MRAW and my workflow went from Canon DPP to Adobe Lightroom to occasionally Noise Ninja. I look forward to a future lightroom upgrade so that I can skip the DPP step in my workflow.

For anyone else reading this thread, the posted pictures do have a fair amount of post production sharpening and adjusting in them. So if you are looking for the performance of the 7D straight out of the camera, you need to look at some of the many other threads of test targets and the like.

I say ya did a very admiral job on these!! So how did you find the 7D did in this type of shooting situation? From the look of the images, I think I'll repurchase another 85mm F1.8, great bang for the buck!!

Thanks for posting the images and having the exif info intact.

--
Jerry
http://www.pbase.com/tocarver
Equipment, to date, (+: In profile

 

[mickcivic]

I'm wondering why you didn't choose to go with your Sigma 50-150mm f2.8 for tighter crops.

Seems like a good lens choice--is there something about that lens you don't like?

I ask because I'm looking at this lens specifically to replace a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 HSM due to the size and weight (specifically for theatre photography)

 

[dmm698475]

I did not use the 50-150mm because it is currently at sigma service to get calibrated.

Now that I have a 7D I spent some time with all of my lenses to microadjust the focus. I found that the 50-150mm was in need of both + and - adjustments depending on where in the zoom range I measured. On my 400D the 50-150mm was somewhat of an inaccurate focuser at distances greater than 15ft. But I never really measured it in a test chart config since the 400D did not have the ability to adjust.

Also, the 50-150mm is of course slower than my 85mm F1.8. I am happy to crop the 7D shots down to simulate zooming in as well.

I'm wondering why you didn't choose to go with your Sigma 50-150mm f2.8 for tighter crops.

Seems like a good lens choice--is there something about that lens you don't like?

I ask because I'm looking at this lens specifically to replace a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 HSM due to the size and weight (specifically for theatre photography)

 

[guatitamasluz]

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guatitamasluz/