BenMeadors.com

After my post about the 24-hour project, I thought I would share the techniques I used to take photos in a very low-lit area with just a 50mm and natural light.

First things first, during the actual performance it was hard to get really close, which made the light even worse. Also I almost always shoot handheld for theatre events. I tend to run around vigorously during a performance or rehearsal trying to find just the right angle for a scene. The problem with shooting in a big black box theatre is that the stage is always somewhere different: different height, different lighting, etc. Every time I shoot in there it’s a bit different. So back to the light quality. I had to shoot at fairly slow shutter speeds, although having a nice wide aperture helped. For this shot to the right it was f2.8 at 1/100 with -2/3 exposure comp. Really the most important thing was how I held the camera. I’ve been trying out Joe McNally‘s method of holding a camera. He calls it “the grip” and you can watch a video of it here. Joe makes a good point that you don’t want your camera off wobbling somewhere not over your center of balance. Since I don’t have a full frame camera, I just hunch my shoulder up a bit and rest my camera on my shoulder. I think if I had the external battery grip it would make it a little easier. After that, it was just a matter of keeping my eye in the viewfinder and shooting as much as I could. I suppose that’s really all you can hope for when you have hardly any control over the scene.