I use this site as well as my photography site to help small business build their brand and give them a more professional presence on the web and through their promotional material. My first project was to get Denver Dance up and make them stand out from the other dance studios in the Denver area. I have designed the look and feel of the site and videos and made sure Marguerite had all the tools to get her message out to the public. Last night, she held a benefit at my studio for a fellow dancer who was paralyzed while dancing.
I have been getting over a cold and was just not feeling very well, but I went to the benefit with my Canon 5D and a 28-70 2.8 L lens as well as the 50mm 1.8. I was thinking I’d maybe snap some shots for the site, but I wasn’t planning on much. One thing about the dancers I have had to film in the past is they like the lights down. These are students who are shy or not use to dancing in front of people. The lights down help them out and gives a nice atmosphere to the whole event. To anyone having to record this event, its not soo good.
I am not sure what made me want to do this, but I decided to film the performances. I didn’t have any audio equipment, did not have my Jag35 Follow Focus so I was left with a tripod and a squinty eye hoping my manual focus ability would do. I did have my Marshal Monitor to help get a bigger picture of the dance, but it was soo dark. I turned the ISO all the way up and shot at 2.8,1/30sec and even then it was kind of dark, but I have to say the results are impressive for the lack of light there was to work with. The grain in the picture is minimal and since this is meant to be posted to YouTube, I think the results are really good. Finally, the audio portion of the footage is good for being in camera. This is not a production quality video and I was not prepared for recording this so I had nothing to work with, but I think the Canon 5D produced a great result.
The only post I did on the footage was add a little bit of brightness and contrast and lowered the audio levels a bit, but other than that, what you see is what the 5D produced at 6400 ISO. Not bad for a sick guy ( physically not mentally 😉 ) with little equipment. I know if I had any point-and-shoot or handheld, the results would have been much worse. It was hard for me to see in this place so those pixels had little to work with.
The night was a great success and the girls raised a fair amount of money for a fellow dancer.
Below is one of the performances that was posted from the event.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K-tMpJEt2Y[/youtube]
Check out Denver Dance for more information about the event or to see what we did to make it what it is today.
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