Christian Photographers Community

Hi Everyone,
I have a church event ( the event is going to be a musical & besides that the older youth are going to dance , drama or something) coming up that gives me the opportunity to experience first hand for the first time. ( photographing people).
The event is going to take place at sugar land city hall) outside at 5pm - 6pm. Here's the problem : it gets dark
( i seen the city hall at nite . It has some spot lights but i don't think there's enough light there to get really good pics taken fast with out having the exposure to take a long time. & i don't know if i should just a flash cause i don't want to have the kids mess up in a dance during the musical because i used a flash.?.? what should i do?) like around 5:45pm or so & i have photographed different things ( sky- trees-streets & sun sets) at night before & i know that at one point i would have to wipe out my tripod.
But how do i photograph a musical at night? any ideas? Any tips? guide lines?
I appreciate all the responses & tips to this question!
Thanks so much.

Hi creative_one

You have a couple of options here. You can light the subject some how or slow the shutter down to get the exposure. If the subjects are moving slowing the shutter down will give you motion blur even if you can hold the camera still.

I would use a fast lens with a high iso and hope the shutter speed will be fast enough so you don't get blur. I don't know what camera you use so don't know what options you have but with my 20D I often use a iso of 3200, that is as high as i can go. I would edit the photos the way i wanted and then run them through software to remove the noise.

HTH
Don

Thanks Don for the post!
I have a Nikon D60 with lens : 55-200mm & 18-55mm.

I use a Canon but I downloaded the manual for your camera and I see you have the option to set the iso to h which will be 3200. I would use the h setting for low light although this will make noise in your photo. Use the lens with the biggest aperture, that will be the lens with the smallest f stop, in other words shoot with the lens wide open.

Go and practice with your camera using these settings to see what happens. Make sure you take lots of shots, fill the card up.

Here is a example I shot recently in our old sanctuary. ISO 3200,Shutter 1/25s,Aperture f5.6, Focal Length 85mm. These were hand held.

This one is exactly as it came out of the camera.

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Here it is after editing.

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Would have been better to use a tripod with such a slow shutter.

Don