Photoclubalpha

The St. Louis Ballet's production of Giselle opened last night (Friday). I've got a bit-part with no dancing, just walking around on stage in costume. The young guys have to all of the hard dancing this time around. Here are a few shots from the technical/spacing rehearsals on Thursday. I usually keep my A99 backstage and grab it to take shots when I'm not needed on stage, but for this production I thought that I'd give my RX100IV a try. The A99 definitely provides better quality but the RX100IV is a lot easier to use because I can keep it in the pocket of my sweat pants while moving around on stage... and the other dancers don't get so easily distracted by it.
Sig

RX100IV I took this shot as a panorama with the RX100IV being held vertically in the "portrait" position so that I could capture the full height of the stage. It kind of looks like I used a fish-eye lens.
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Excellent set Sig.

Sury

Very good!

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Hi Smulnik;

Been a while since I saw Giselle staged or during rehearsals...

Good to see the action and reminisce. You never told us you were a dancer as well as a photographer too which is neat.

Lovely shots.

Thanks for sharing.

Yildiz

Thanks guys!

aster wrote: You never told us you were a dancer as well as a photographer too which is neat.

Thanks! Actually, I'm an old washed-up dancer. I guess you can say that I'm in the Ballet Reserves. I get called-up to do the big classical productions which have choreographies that require a lot of bodies to fill the stage. It's nice to get back on stage from time to time, but secretly I would rather skip the dancing, and instead take photos of the other dancers.

Here are a couple more shots of the stage before the sets, drops, and props get positioned for opening night. These are panoramas taken with the A99 & 24-70 ZA held vertically in portrait while sweeping from left to right.
Sig

A99, 24-70 ZA, portrait panorama (left to right). One of our stage hands, Marshall, is re-taping sections of the marley dance floor, and Lauren is walking through some of her dances.
A99, 24-70 ZA, portrait panorama (left to right).

Just a few backstage shots of the Wilis doing their thing.
Sig

RX100IV RX100IV RX100IV

Nice

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Absolutely gorgeous, Smulnik !

The suspense and the quiet before they are all engulfed by the lime lights and all rise on their pointe satin ballet shoes... They remind me of Degas's or Guan Zeju's ballerina/ballet paintings of the last century. The ambient light and the way they are lined up in their costumes are so similar.

Thanks for sharing, nicely shot. You are really doing justice to your friends' beauty and talent.

Yildiz

Still surprised by how good the RX100 MkIV back illuminated CMOS is. To keep up to date with other systems, I've switched from APS-C Sony to Olympus (and may not ever go back to APS-C Sony, only full frame - that's another story). Good though the Olympus 20 megapixel sensor is, when I do high ISO and general sharpness tests against the similar pixel count Sony 1" I am fairly sure there is little difference. I regularly use my RX100 MkIV at ISO 1600 with almost noise-free results.

Great shots from backstage, Degas did use a camera (one of the first rollfilm rather than plate, I believe) and it's one reason for the distinctive poses, perspective and apparent intrusions or random cropping in his paintings. At the time painters normally tried to contain and frame every element and would never draw just part of a figure - if you go back a bit further, it's funny to see how street scenes which in a photograph would have had half horses, half people and other stuff round the edges often had everything 'whole' and neatly inside the 'crop'! So, work in a great tradition.

David

1 and 2 in your last post are excellent images.
Bravo.

Thanks Yildiz, Valerie, & JT!

aster wrote: The suspense and the quiet before they are all engulfed by the lime lights and all rise on their pointy satin ballet shoes... They remind me of paintings by Degas's or Guan Zeju's ballerina/ballet paintings of the last century.

Yes, the backstage experience during a ballet is very picturesque. It's one place that I can easily get totally absorbed in photography. However, it's not always quiet. When the ladies are exiting in one wing and then running in those pointe shoes to another wing for their next entrance, they sound like a pack of horses trotting across a cobblestone road.
Sig

David Kilpatrick wrote: Great shots from backstage, Degas did use a camera (one of the first rollfilm rather than plate, I believe) and it's one reason for the distinctive poses, perspective and apparent intrusions or random cropping in his paintings.

Thanks David!
I didn't realize that Degas used a camera. That's intriguing. Now I can't un-see it in his paintings.
The RX100IV worked better than I thought it would, especially since a lot of Act II had very dim lighting on stage and nothing but stray light backstage. I did limit the ISO to 1600, so I had to boost the mid-level brightness in post processing in the first two photos of my last post because the light on the romantic tutus backstage was almost non-existant. The tutus were barely visible.
Sig

One more shot of the Wilis. They're just kicking back until it's time for their next entrance.
RX100IV

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smulnik wrote:Thanks Yildiz, Valerie, & JT!

Yes, the backstage experience during a ballet is very picturesque. It's one place that I can easily get totally absorbed in photography. However, it's not always quiet. When the ladies are exiting in one wing and then running in those pointe shoes to another wing for their next entrance, they sound like a pack of horses trotting across a cobblestone road.
Sig

Hi Sig;

Thank you for sharing more of the backstage. They look neat kicking back. : )

About the "quite" and the way ladies "sounded" when entering and exiting the stage; I know that everything gets a bit louder than should on those old wooden boards. Sometimes the "trot" is even heard by the audience over the orchestra playing and can be distracting for the audience. But that's all part of being there as a live audience at a live performance, until better stage floor materials are introduced which may dampen things down a bit as well as easing the loads on the dancers' knee and ankle joints and bones.
I truly enjoyed these shots, thanks.

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David Kilpatrick wrote:Still surprised by how good the RX100 MkIV back illuminated CMOS is. To keep up to date with other systems, I've switched from APS-C Sony to Olympus (and may not ever go back to APS-C Sony, only full frame - that's another story). Good though the Olympus 20 megapixel sensor is, when I do high ISO and general sharpness tests against the similar pixel count Sony 1" I am fairly sure there is little difference. I regularly use my RX100 MkIV at ISO 1600 with almost noise-free results.

Great shots from backstage, Degas did use a camera (one of the first rollfilm rather than plate, I believe) and it's one reason for the distinctive poses, perspective and apparent intrusions or random cropping in his paintings. At the time painters normally tried to contain and frame every element and would never draw just part of a figure - if you go back a bit further, it's funny to see how street scenes which in a photograph would have had half horses, half people and other stuff round the edges often had everything 'whole' and neatly inside the 'crop'! So, work in a great tradition.

David

Hi David;

Very enlightening! I had a closer look at Degas's paintings and read some more on his work; he indeed painted as would a photographer shoot, it appears. Interesting.

Praise for the RX100 MkIV comes at a time when I was looking for a smaller camera that can do the job of a DSLR. : ) I like this camera but I have lenses that I can use, so maybe the chances of a Sony A6000 or higher is better.

Thanks for the info,

Yildiz