Tips for shooting a school play

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Asha'man X

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Hi everyone,

Next weekend, I will be photographing my school's drama production. I've already spent some time checking out a tech rehearsal, where I've established that the entire play is going to be lit 99% of the time with just plain light from par cans, fresnells and some LED lights. All together the lights produce a really decently lit stage (for a change) As far as I know, there's no colour or action happening.

My question is this - how do I shoot the play without ending up with one side of a kid's face overexposed? I normally shoot in Av mode, Evaluative metering, AutoISO and f/2.8 in order to keep shutter speed up and motion blur down. The higher ISO may cause the problem I think, as while the rest of the scene is usually ok, kid's faces tend to get overexposed for some reason. Equipment for the play will be a Canon 5D Mark4 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 II L IS USM lens.

Should I rather shoot in manual mode, or should I perhaps use exposure compensation to underexpose slightly the lighten in post production? Use center-weighted or partial metering instead of evaluative? My main goal is to get a good exposure all round, but avoid losing detail on a kid's face due to overexposure.

Thanks for any tips and advice!
 
Who are you shooting the play for? The school or yourself? If it's for the school ask for a photo call. That way you can light it yourself and they get pics for the programme.

If you're worried about blowing out their faces under expose a bit and try and pull out some shadow detail in post.

And shoot in silent mode.
 
"shooting a school play"
"blowing out their faces"

lol, I know it's photography but nowadays probably not the best choice of words. ;):p
 
Not directly camera related but:

The #1 piece of advice is have a backup plan for everything for live anything. Sht always goes wrong. Every.single.fkin.time.

Sound tech but similar I suppose - I've literally had cases where the primary microphone fails, and the backup mic fails 5 mins later. By some miracle I had a 2nd (wired) backup set up on that day.
 
bwana said:
Who are you shooting the play for? The school or yourself? If it's for the school ask for a photo call. That way you can light it yourself and they get pics for the programme.

If you're worried about blowing out their faces under expose a bit and try and pull out some shadow detail in post.

And shoot in silent mode.
Click to expand...

Thanks bwana! I am shooting the play for the school itself, since I've more or less taken over photographic duties at the school. I got tired of the poor quality stuff that we kept churning out, so decided to step up and do something about it.

I watched a tech rehearsal of sorts yesterday, after the 1st scene the lights become quite static and basic. I'll go see a full rehearsal today so I can make some notes. Brought my camera in for something else, so will take some test shots as well, bracket exposures etc.
 
From a settings point of view, make sure your shutter speed is high enough to freeze the action - if you're shooting hand held, don't go below 1/60th of a second unless you're intentionally blurring your subjects. Also, don't be afraid to crank up the ISO if required, grainy photos are better than no photos.
 
Make sure you have enough ammunition and start with the lead roles first, kids playing trees would run slower.
For dramatic effect end with the piano player
 
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