Night Photography of Dancing

[Brownbear]

I will be attending a Mexican Fiesta tonight and hope to capture some photos of the Folkloric Dancers and Charro (Mexican Horseman Roping Show)... The event is outside lit by florescent lights and I just have a normal 18-50 mm lens, Used Sony DSLR alpha 200 camera.

For best results I think I should use
Tripod
ISO 800 - 1600
Shoot Raw to enable a faster shutter speed
Shutter Speed 300-500
White Balance ?
Manual Focus

The lowest my aperture goes to is 4.5, and I'd really like to capture some nice shots.. Any and all advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[Glenn NK]

There will always be compromises, and night shooting has more.

Use as high an ISO that you can (within limitations of noise),

RAW of course will help solve the white balance problem - but if the lighting is mixed (incandescent and fluorescent) it will still pose a problem

If I was doing it, I (might) leave the tripod at home - you did say dancers - so they are moving and the only advantage the tripod offers is long exposures. On the other hand, some longer exposures may be quite interesting.

Hopefully your AF will work under the lighting conditions - manual focus will be challenging with moving dancers.

You may get away with slower shutter speeds (again some blur may add to the feeling of movement) and this would help with depth of field (which in turn may make exact focusing less critical).

All in all, it sounds like a fun evening. Enjoy and show us some images.

Glenn

[Brownbear]

Hi Glen,
Thank you for the advice. Very much appreciated... My action night shots are not so great, but I will post a few if they turn out half decent, only to share the event with others. Now I have to get ready!

[rpcrowe]

I shot some street dancers in Xi'an China and there was virtually no light except for a relatively dim streetlight which was a distance away. So there was no possibility of shooting this with available light only. I needed to pump in some additional light. I will normally bounce my flash, except that this was in the street at night with nothing off which to bounce the flash.

I used my 550EX pointed up (in bounce configuration) modified with a Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro. The Flip-It portion of the Flash Difuser Pro was pointed forward at about 45 degrees, This directed a fair amount of the flash light forward but that light was somewhat softer than direct flash and I did not have as much of a problem with burned out foregrounds and the light quickly falling out into deep shadows.

[Brownbear]

Sharing a few shots just for general interest of Mexican Fiestas (ie; not great shots) Including a couple of blurry ones...

[Shadowman]

Christina,

For some reason I like the fifth photo the best. Very difficult subject matter, I had the same problem in an old mansion with standard lighting. Flash worked best but I only used it for a few shots because I feel it is annoying to the performers.

[Brownbear]

That's great to know because I too, like the fifth photo despite the blur...! It's hard to get close enough to use flash... Hopefully with more fiestas my skills will improve.

[Brownbear]

Actually, here's my fave... Backstage antics