Behind the lines

Experimental music and contemporary dance: Georgia and Germany

1/100 sec, f4.0, ISO 10,000

This past weekend Russudan Meipariani and friends performed an evening of original music compositions and dance to full houses in Scheer, Schorndorf and Stuttgart. In Schorndorf I was positioned right next to the dance floor and fired off 2500 photos.



I was aiming to save only the highlights, so the camera was set to -1.7EV most of the time.

1/500 sec, f4.0, ISO 5,000

After a while, I realized that, thanks to the WISIWYG electronic viewfinder, it was helpful to toggle the AEL and shoot at a certain exposure as long as I was pointing my camera in a certain direction.

1/250 sec, f4.5, ISO 4,000

I was shooting into the lights most of the time. I did some experimenting with shutter speeds varying primarily from 1/30 to 1/500. Did I want to capture motion in the hands and legs or stop them in their tracks with a fast shutter speed? In the best case, I'd get something like this:

1/200 sec, f4.5, ISO 10,000

The colorful dresses and waving hair of the beautiful dancers were so intoxicating that I couldn't stop taking pictures.

1/400 sec, f4.0, ISO 10,000

The f4/24-105 lens was perfect for the dance performance. I took a lot of the photos at 24mm in order to capture the entire scene - musicians and all seven dancers, who were spread out over the 8x8m dance floor in the Versöhnungskirche. I took about a third of the photos in APS-C crop mode so that I was shooting from the center of the sensor. I was thinking the image would be less distorted and of a better quality at a high ISO. It also crops the picture tighter when I want to concentrate on just one or two dancers.

1/250 sec, f4.5, ISO 4,000

After analyzing my statistics for the shoot - something I like to do - I see that most of the best pictures were taken at somewhere between ISO 4,000-10,000 and at either 1/125 or 1/250 sec, with a slight preference for the shorter exposure. That means in order to capture this kind of motion, one needs speed and a sensitive sensor.
I was shooting with a silent shutter because I didn't want to disturb the performance. The only picture which showed signs of rolling shutter distortion was the one below, where the dancer's hand looks strange; however, that could also come from the angle and normal movement. In short: the silent shutter worked like a charm!

1/250 sec, f4.0, ISO 10,000

A tightly cropped photos sends a different message from one with a frame of empty space around it. And when you get the fact, the open eyes and a hand all in one frame, you are pleased as punch!

1/125 sec, f4.5, ISO 5000

Martin Zentner was sitting in another corner taking pictures throughout the performance, too. His photos on Facebook show these dancers from another perspective - and with the light shining on them (as opposed to shooting into the light). His photos turned out incredibly well! Check them out.