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04/15/2007 05:57:59 PM · #1 |
| Need some tips for shooting a piano recital. It was yesterday, but I'm anticipating more. Obviously I couldn't use flash, but the room was fairly well-lit, and I took a big step when I brought a tripod for the first time. But now I have blurry hands in most of the shots. I'm thinking now I should have shot in shutter priority mode. If so, can anyone recommend a speed? Should I also have tweaked ISO? Obviously every situation is a bit different, but I'm just looking for a good starting point. For what it's worth, I had all 3X of my zoom in action. Thanks! |
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04/15/2007 07:11:08 PM · #2 |
If you had shot in shutter priority, to achieve faster shutter speeds you would probably of had to bump the ISO up or you'd end up with under exposed pictures.
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04/15/2007 07:21:07 PM · #3 |
Most zoom lenses are forced to use a smaller aperture (let in less light) on the long end of the zoom range. So you could save yourself a little bit a light (and therefore increase your shutter speed a bit) by moving it closer and shooting wide instead of long.
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04/15/2007 07:24:33 PM · #4 |
Indoors, particularly at the long end of the zoom, it's likely that the camera was auto-selecting the widest aperture anyway. In this situation, I would put the ISO as high as you can (400 on your camera), and then use aperture priority for the widest aperture - 2.8 if it will do that at the long end. This will give you the fastest shutter speed.
Try some test images before hand to see how bad the noise is at ISO 400.
Another approach if shutter speed is more important than other image quality parameters, such as noise, then you can deliberately underexpose the image with a faster shutter speed, and then boost the exposure later in software. The only problem is that noise will tend to get very bad doing this, so be careful.
I hope this helps. Good luck! |
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04/15/2007 07:33:14 PM · #5 |
While what you said is 100% accurate ... just so my point isn't lost (or confused) upon reading yours, I want to clarify one thing:
Originally posted by surfdabbler:
Indoors, particularly at the long end of the zoom, it's likely that the camera was auto-selecting the widest aperture anyway. |
Just keep in mind that the "widest aperture" it can select, while at the long end of the zoom lens, is very likely to be much smaller than the widest aperture it can select at the wide end of the zoom lens.
When you see a lens that is rated 28-80mm f/2.8-5.6, what it is saying is that at the 28mm length, the largest aperture is f/2.8. But at the 80mm length, the largest aperture is only f/5.6, which lets in only 1/4th the amount of light. (these numbers are NOT representative of your camera/lens, I don't know what your camera specs are, but they serve to illustrate my point)
So... if you can get in closer to the subject, the camera will probably be able to use a wider aperture and let in more light.
Message edited by author 2007-04-15 19:34:45.
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04/15/2007 09:23:00 PM · #6 |
Thanks for the replies. I was as close as I could get without sitting on a recitalist's lap -- 12 to 15 feet away. I should have included some stats. All the pictures were shot at 19mm, F2.8, 1/6 sec., and ISO 200. The lighting is very good. Here's a sample (cropped and resized only):
//www.yourpittsburghhome.com/dpc/piano1.jpg |
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04/15/2007 09:26:54 PM · #7 |
The 1/6 sec will definitely get you blur in the hands. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Having some motion helps tell the story.
To get stop action though you may have to shoot at around 1/100 or even faster depending on the piece being played.
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04/15/2007 10:49:17 PM · #8 |
Actually, I think the blurred hands look kinda cool!!! The fact that everything else is frozen shows that you were using a tripod and that the blur is "motion blur" not shaky photographer hands. I like it.
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04/15/2007 11:16:25 PM · #9 |
The lighting looks fairly even, and I agree that some blur in the hands looks good for this shot. So, if you still want to eliminate it, I would bump up the ISO like mentioned earlier, and I would underexpose a little (very little) though this would change the mood of the scene a bit. :)
Any chance they would allow you to bring lights to the next one? |
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