How to photograph young musicians

How to get great shots with available light

Focus
Focusing in dim light is challenging. The only thing that needs to be perfectly in focus is eyes of your subject. This is true when photographing wildlife, and it's true photographing kids. Because you are probably shooting with your lens wide open you need to focus very accurately (remember: the wider your aperture the shallower the depth of focus). When shooting 35mm I use an auto focus camera. One thing I looked for in a camera body is the ability to move the auto focus activation button away from the shutter release. I can press a button on the back of the camera to make it focus and then recompose and shoot as much as I want without the auto focus kicking in again. The reason for this is that the area I want to focus on is rarely the same area where the auto focus sensor is since performers generally don't stray too far while playing, I don't need the camera to constantly refocus for every shot. You need to be careful with performers that rock back and forth; clarinetists and violinists can be especially prone to this. You can try focusing on one spot and wait for them to move into focus rather than trying to refocus with every movement.

Exposure
The stage is one place where a spot meter is worth its weight in gold. Unfortunately spot meters sometimes cost their weight in gold. If you can get a camera with a built in spot meter it will make you life easier. In fact it makes exposure a breeze—at least when the lights don't change a lot like they do in theatre and opera productions. My technique is to aim the spot meter area at the performer's cheek or forehead and add 1.5 stops more exposure. (open up 1.5 stops in photo speak—this can be a little confusing because your lens is probably opened up all the way). If the spot meter is telling me to shoot at 1/250 sec., I put the camera in manual mode and shoot at about 1/100. Once I have determined my exposure I just leave it alone unless the lighting changes. There is no reason to use anything more complicated. This works every time for people with light colored skin. If you are shooting someone with darker skin, the meter won't read as much light reflecting of off your subject and you will need to adjust less or not at all. If you are shooting print film, getting the exposure close is good enough. If you are unlucky enough to have a camera without a spot meter you should still be just fine. You can use the same technique with a center-weighted meter. You will need to be a bit more mindful of what your meter is seeing. I have never had good luck with matrix meters and theatre lights. Even the very smart meter in the Nikon F5 works poorly with concert spots.

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