Advice needed on event shoot

[too2manypups]

Hi,

First off, let me say I appreciate any help I get on this. I am a photography student and I had to do an event, which is fairly easy. Well I opened my mouth and the commander of the academy my husband instructs at asked me to do the graduation this afternoon. I have done stuff like this before but only for me. It will be in a theater and of course they will be in full military uniforms. Their other photographer moved away so I guess I got lucky, but a one day notice is not fun. I can't use flash or any of my own lighting, of course the stage will be lit. Any advice whatsoever would be much appreciated. I know I can do this decent enough but it's no longer just a class assignment. The photos will be put on a disk for the graduates to keep so I would like to do it as well as I can.

Thanks very much!
Twanna

[Gavin Seim]

Well if their not allowing you to use any lights they are really limiting you. I'd probably tell them I need to use a strobe. Everybody will probably be using them on their point and shoots anyways.

If you can't, you're left with natural light and the only option is to crank up the ISO. Depending on your camera that could be fine, or a mess.

[David Souther]

Pretty much Iso and noise reduction is what your left with. Move in closer to the lit stage that may give you better shutter speeds to work with, use a wider angle lens and crop of you have to as well. along with a wide open aperture. That may suck for dof control but you have to work with what you have. You will probably need to do quite a bit of tweaking to them when processing. But at least your getting pushed to work to the extremes.

[pmcphotography]

Fast Lens, High ISO.

All you can do, really.

[neil_gaudet]

I've found that when shooting in a theatre type environment I can keep my camera around ISO 800 or 1000 if I use spot meter, and meter off of the people lit by the stage lights.  That way your shutter speeds will be acceptable (providing they are not dancing around too much) and noise won't really be an issue.  If you use evaluative metering the camera will see all that black and freak out, jamming out really long exposures.  I shoot in aperture mode.

Of course you can just shoot manual but don't trust your histogram.  It will be far to the left with all the dark parts of the theatre.

[Gavin Seim]

YA it can certainly be done. I remember doing a school play that way when I was around sixteen. That was handheld and on film with nothing but stage lights. Dancers and all. I got some good stuff to.

Practice makes perfect with low light shooting, just like anything. Being a good photographer means knowing how to handle hard situations.

[pmcphotography]

Yeah, you probably could get away with spot metering off their faces. The problem, maybe, is that the rest of the stage might be plunged into blackness. One of the tradeoffs you might have to make, I suppose. 

[scorpio_e]

You can always exposure bracket too. Just take lots of memory;)