How to photograph young musicians

How to get great shots with available light

Lens and camera
Recital halls are boring to look at. That is unless your kids are playing in Esterháza, in which case this article may not be for you. So why do people fill the space in their photos with the hall interior and dedicate about 10 percent of the photo's area to their kid? Most likely it is because they haven't learned to really fill the frame with their subject. This is one of the golden rules of photography. If you want good pictures you must take responsibility for every square millimeter of film. This isn't to say that some subjects don't benefit from some breathing room or that the subject of the photo is always obvious. Sometimes the sky is the subject or you really do want to take a photo of the performance space with the performer in it. Normally, however, a photo can be vastly improved by simplifying it and getting closer. You can get closer physically but there is a limit in a recital situation to how close you can be. A more practical way to get close is with a longer lens. How long? Well that depends on the hall and your budget. In most cases anything in the 100–200mm range will work. A lens's focal length is only half of the story, however. Because you will be shooting in dim light you must pay close attention to the speed of the lens. When people talk of lens speed they are referring to the maximum aperture that lens is able to use. This is the area where point and shoot zooms generally fail. As an example lets look at the Pentax IQZoom 105G Zoom 38-105mm Auto Focus 35mm Point & Shoot. (Chosen somewhat randomly from the B&H website). Here's a camera with a pretty decent zoom range. A 105mm lens will, after all, allow you to get fairly close to the action if you have a good seat, but this is the catch: when zoomed out to 105mm the maximum aperture on this camera is f/11. That is useless for available light photos. A lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 will let in 16 times more light than the lens on this camera. There are point and shoot cameras with fast lenses but these are limited to shorter lenses normally around 35mm. This is the part people don't want to hear, but if you want really good photos of your kids performances, you need a camera that will accommodate a fairly fast, moderately long lens. A 35mm SLR with interchangable lenses is your answer. Which camera you choose within this group doesn't really matter–almost any will do so long as the shutter speed are more or less accurate and you can manually set the exposure. Certain cameras have built in metering and film transport that will make your life easier but they won't effect the quality of your photos. Which lens you choose will effect the photos. My favorite lens for small recitals is an 80-200 f/2.8. Since I shoot Nikon cameras I use a Nikon a lens. Canon, Minolta, and Pentax all offer similar lenses and manufacturers such as Tamaron and Tokina make lenses in this range that are a bit more affordable. The zoom range on this lens is about perfect for this work and the constant f/2.8 aperture is fast enough in most situations. Most people, however, tend to balk at the price. Fast pro zooms are expensive.

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