Another High School Musical

I did my local high school musical Pro Bono shooting this week. Last Spring it was a production of Grease, and you can view my blog entry about that experience here. This Fall the school is doing a production of You Gotta Charleston which is kind of a jukebox musical from the 1920's.

While this was a "dress rehearsal" so that I could walk up and down the aisles and in between rows of seats, parents were still working on uncompleted sets and instead of the performance microphones singers were using hand held microphones.

Like last time I used the EOS 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for the performance shots although I now have the IS II version of the lens and went without monopod for mobility purposes although my left arm was sore after a bit. This setup weighs about six pounds.

Also like last time I used the EOS 7D for head shots although instead of the 50mm f/1.4 lens I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens zoomed out to 70mm. My 430EXII speedlite was bounced off of a Rogue FlashBender above and to the right of the subject while the on camera flash of the 7D provided fill from the left.

All shots are wide open at f/2.8 to get the background of the head shots out of focus and to get adequate shutter speeds for the performance shots. Head shots were made at ISO 400 and the performance shots at ISO 1600. Here a few examples and you can view my shots of this event on my Zenfolio site here.