Need some advice- shooting at Staples Center

[Pete.A]

Hey all, as you can see from my post count, I'm pretty much a lurker 'round here.  I'm a hobbyist with modest gear, and my daughters dance company has invited me to shoot their performance tonight @ Staples Center (they're performing during half time at tonight's Clippers game)  I'll have floor access @ half court and Im not sure what gear to go with as I'll only have a couple minutes to get set before they start.

Here's what I have to work with:
T1i
50m 1.8
17-40F4L
24-105F4L

Im thinking about just mounting up the 24-105 and calling it a day, but I'm thinking the 50m aperture may come in handy.... any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks all

[Sith Zombie]

I would take the 24-105 and the 50. depending on the lighting, you may or not get by with the 24-105 but the 50 will get it done if the lighting is lacking for f4. Only prob then is your limited to 1 focal length and I find it a bit of a difficult one on crop. Hopefully you should be fine with the 24-105.

[Ryan708]

Id go with the 24-105, and 50mm as well. My T1i was a little noisy above 1600 ISO, I hope you won;t need a real High ISO. My advice from shooting under pressure,

shoot in RAW: better noise reduction avail in post as well as other modifications

Find a good balance between analyzing each shot, and spray-and pray: Ive over-done both situations and found few keepers, but with a good balance I end up with more keepers

chances are if they picked you, they have seen some of your work, and you have more talent than them, and they will like what you shoot, so dont stress (I cant actually do this in practice)

[Pete.A]

Thanks all, I was able to get away with using the 24-105 tonight... F4 and ISO 800 allowed me to keep the shutter above 1/200.  I think I got a few nice keepers, tough to tell until I get them batch uploaded to aperture.  I'll post up some samples when I get done processing.

[Sith Zombie]

Thats good to hear and the exposure values seem very reasonable for an indoor shoot, not to heavy on the iso. I think when shooting indoors, we all stress out and think that we need f1.8 lenses and 64000 iso but can often get by on lower iso and smaller apertures. Sometimes indoor lighting can be pretty decent.

[atosk930]

That's awesome. Did that include free tickets to a game?

An interesting post I read a while back when the Brooklyn nets were getting their new facility built.  They used the same lighting technique as the Staples Center.

http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/1671

[Pete.A]

Had to pay for the tix, but they did a nice job with upgrading us . Given the chance to do it again, I'd rent a 17-55 2.8, I think the extra stop would have put my shutter up little closer to where it needed to be (>1/300).  A lot of the images are softer than they appeared in the camera.  I'll get a sample or two up when I get to my computer later.

[robbymack]

Had to pay for the tix, but they did a nice job with upgrading us . Given the chance to do it again, I'd rent a 17-55 2.8, I think the extra stop would have put my shutter up little closer to where it needed to be (>1/300).  A lot of the images are softer than they appeared in the camera.  I'll get a sample or two up when I get to my computer later.

That's a pretty awesome deal, plus the clip show is much better than the lake show right now.

One thing I would say is that often times opening up that extra stop is at the expense of dof and some of your soft images could have been from mis focus especially with a Rebel even at f4. Too bad you can go back tonight and play around again 

[Pete.A]

As promised here's a couple of samples.  Going over the images, I was off on what I had said my settings were:

I had the ISO up at 1600, F4 and 200ish on the shutter