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Notes on photographing this series, in case it helps someone out there:
As late afternoon gave way to evening and night, availabe light obviously reduced but the stage lighting became more pronounced so my shots became more dramatic.
That said, the overall availability of light meant increasingly challenging exposures. By experimenting, I reached an acceptable exposure by setting shutter speed to avoid camera shake (1/f), not quite zooming in all the way and stopping down a little for sharpness, then allowing auto-ISO to do the rest.
I would have liked to have set a lower upper-limit for the auto-ISO but as the ambient light reduced I had to concede something; shutter speed would risk blur due to camera shake, opening up the aperture would reduce my already fairly shallow dof, higher ISO introduces more noise.
In the end I opted for increasing ISO as the night wore on, hoping to reduce the noise to an acceptable level in post-processing. I humbly think I achieved that. For the most part, when it came to noise reduction I left a little 'digital grain' rather than go for velvety-smooth background bokeh; personal preference given the subject matter.
Hope this was useful to someone!
As late afternoon gave way to evening and night, availabe light obviously reduced but the stage lighting became more pronounced so my shots became more dramatic.
That said, the overall availability of light meant increasingly challenging exposures. By experimenting, I reached an acceptable exposure by setting shutter speed to avoid camera shake (1/f), not quite zooming in all the way and stopping down a little for sharpness, then allowing auto-ISO to do the rest.
I would have liked to have set a lower upper-limit for the auto-ISO but as the ambient light reduced I had to concede something; shutter speed would risk blur due to camera shake, opening up the aperture would reduce my already fairly shallow dof, higher ISO introduces more noise.
In the end I opted for increasing ISO as the night wore on, hoping to reduce the noise to an acceptable level in post-processing. I humbly think I achieved that. For the most part, when it came to noise reduction I left a little 'digital grain' rather than go for velvety-smooth background bokeh; personal preference given the subject matter.
Hope this was useful to someone!
