Is dance a sport?

This seemed like the best topic to post this under.
My niece is really into dance and I went and shot her dance recital on Saturday. I was really impressed with all the performers. This studio really seems to be turning out some great dancers.

I shot with my K-5 and a few lenses: Tamron 28-75 2.8, Pentax A* 300mm f/4, Pentax DA L 55-300 f/4-5.8. I made good use of the high ISO capability of the K-5 shooting in ISO 3200 much of the time.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8346/8...36c57db8_c.jpg
IMGP5439 by MattB.net, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8358/8...5fbb2a9b_c.jpg
IMGP5495 by MattB.net, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8214/8...d8e3cf78_c.jpg
IMGP5737 by MattB.net, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8064/8...8b52da76_c.jpg
IMGP5916 by MattB.net, on Flickr

Finally, my niece who really stole the show (not that I'm biased :) )
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8492/8...bef1907d_c.jpg
IMGP6105 by MattB.net, on Flickr

The woman who runs the academy is very excited about the photos and wants to order some big canvases for the studio and also wants to purchase use of images for her web site. I'm also hoping some parents will want prints but no sales on those yet.

Matt,


You have some great shots here whether or not they can technically be classified as sports images. My favorites are #2 and #5.

I'm amazed that you were able to stop action as well as you did on these images shooting at the relatively slow shutter speeds you were using. I'm sure that I would have felt it necessary to go with much higher shutter speeds, but maybe that would have given you serious noise problems with the K-5.


Bob

Thanks Bob. I tried to keep ISO as low as possible but I probably could have gone a little higher and still been able to control the noise reasonably well. I like traces of blur in some action to give the feeling of motion so I wasn't too worried about absolutely stopping it all.

I went through this same thing about a week ago with my granddaughter. She's 8 years old, and just starting ballet, this is her first session with the local academy, so we're at the other end of the skills spectrum from your dancer.

It was definitely a challenge to find the right balance of ISO, noise, and motion. She was in the 7th dance, and I probably shot 200 frames in the prior dances to see what worked. I ended up with ISO 1600 and 1/200th, and spot metering, but the images were darker on the PC than they looked on the camera's LCD, and they weren't full aperture, either. Spot metering probably kept them slightly underexposed, but they looked great on the LCD while practicing. Still, the computer let me bring them up. I posted them to FB to share with family.

Yours are a tad sharper than what I ended up with, so good job!!!! :cool:

Doesn't matter if it sport or not it great action. These young ladies are wonderful athletes and you did a superb job capturing their skills.

Thanks guys!

Sport or not, it's good action capture.
Not that you're biased :)
But that last picture is a great capture.