Here are the second half of the musical rehearsal after the intermission. This part was relatively hard to shoot as the lighting condition was really bad. Under no flash condition, the only way to escape from dragging the shutter speed is to increase the ISO setting. Previously I was like many photographers I met in person or on the internet, never wanna let ISO be over 800. Until when I heard Jay Maisel said he used ISO 1600 for his daily street shots, I was totally shocked. After several trials, I found that there should be no fear to use higher ISO as it was designed to save you from poor light conditions like this. From the other side, I have to admit that not many cameras on the market will perform as well as Nikon D3s for high ISO performance, even for my handy Canon 5D Mark II. But in order to freeze the motion in the show, one definitely needs a shutter speed no less than 1/160s or 1/250s if possible. In this case, I maintained my ISO as high as 6400, the upper limit of my 5D Mark II (if not bumping into H1 or H2 mode that is nonsense to get any clean image, frankly speaking). I think I've made the right decision to get some shots with good composition and they are totally usable thanks to the high ISO possibilities. B.T.W., I'm looking forward to a new Canon product that will match the high ISO performance of Nikon D3s.
I hope you will like them as much as Part I. Enjoy ~~~ :)
