My girls had their Christmas program this week. Their class acted out scenes from the Christmas Story while their teacher read. It was simple and beautiful.
My daughter, the angel here, asked me to take a photo of each scene so she could see what it looked like.
The photo above was taken at ISO 400, 1/125, f1.6 with a Canon 7D.
Everyone brings a camera to programs like these, but getting a decent photo of kids on stage isn’t easy. My kids love to perform so I have had some practice. When I started, the kids were always overexposed in my photos. All the details in their faces were lost. I tried a flash but it didn’t improve my results. The answer was manual exposure. This is a situation that the camera’s metering system just cannot make sense of. So, set your camera to M and take some test shot if you have a few minutes.
If possible, I’d also recommend taking pictures at the dress rehearsal. I didn’t do that for this progam, but wish I had. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting in anyone’s way so you can move around freely. Also, the night of the performance you can just sit back and enjoy.
excellent information Jenny. It makes the scene makes sense. You are right about capturing these moments. It is also nice that you have the black background. Looks like savanna did a great job.
Nicely done. This is a challenging situation and I agrree dress rehearsal is always better. Although when I was doing this I typically videoed the dress and then I was able to anticipate the good stuff during the performance. Enjoy the shows, they are gone all too soon, at least until the grandkids come.