Advice on shooting a fashion show

sheesh

Hi all,
I will be photographing a charity fashion show for a friend

I have:
canon 400D
Canon f1.8 50 mm
Sigma 80-300 mm
Sigma 17-35 mm
Flash wise i have a canon old non ttl flash (if I can find it)
Also a yashica GSN with color iso800 film
also might have a point and shoot with b/w neopan iso1600 film.

any tips or advice would be appreciated.

thanks

melekalikimaka

stick with the digital, too many cameras will cause more issues than its worth. so just on catwalk shots or can you get backstage?

sheesh

I could probably get back stage

good call on the film camera (i'll use them for gig shots) too much stuff will lead to confusion - easily confused I am

4sb

Hi

I did one of these last year - link below.

Most of my shots were of the social aspect of the show: I was not that happy with the model / catwalk side of things.

I did use off camera flash via a cord. I used an 18-70mm kit lens (on a nikon D300) rated about iso800 and an aperture of F8 or so. I may be doing another one this year, and would hope to borrow a 24-70 F2.8


http://picasaweb.google.com/CualaGAA/FunFashionShow#

sheesh

4sb wrote: »

Hi

I did one of these last year - link below.

Most of my shots were of the social aspect of the show: I was not that happy with the model / catwalk side of things.

I did use off camera flash via a cord. I used an 18-70mm kit lens (on a nikon D300) rated about iso800 and an aperture of F8 or so. I may be doing another one this year, and would hope to borrow a 24-70 F2.8


http://picasaweb.google.com/CualaGAA/FunFashionShow#

I thought the fashion show photographs were pretty good I'd be quiet happy with those What I'm worried about is the light and will there be enough of it.

FoxT

My first strategy would be to use the widest aperture lens available, and then position yourself in a location where you can get the best shots. I think aperture is more important than focal length, provided you can get into a reasonable position. I have a canon 40d & find that if the aperture is smaller then f/4.0 in low light my hit rate falls off quickly, as more & more pics are not focused spot on. This is because wider aperture lenses have a much better AF performance.
My second point is - dont actually use the widest aperture while shooting. Close the lens down a stop if the light permits. So with the 50mm f/1.8 I would shoot at f/2.8. This does 3 things...
1 - Gives a bit more DOF so that if the AF is not spot on it will compensate a bit
and
2 - f/2.8 or f/4.0 is still wide enough to blur the backgrounds
and
3 - all wide aperture lenses are sharper when stopped down a little.

Whether or not to use flash is a tougher question - it depends on the flash you have ( does it support E-TTL II or equivalent) and also what kind of shots are you looking for. Flash gives very harsh light, but also results in significantly darkened backgrounds - so you might want to experiment on that one...

4sb

With the show I did last year, they (the model agency) organized the runway and lighting.

These were footlights on each side of the runway. It made it look dramatic, bu slightly harsh. I don't know if this is standard, but you might be able to contact your organizer / agency to find out.

There was enough lighting to go to F4 at a medium high ISO from what I remember.

As I said, personally I did use a small off camera portable softbox on the flash unit (Lumiquest) to get to F8, but I think this year I will ditch the flash all together and just go with the ambient.