Amateur theatre production - do I need a D700?

[Franglais]

Last night was the Spectacle de l'Election de la Reine des Fraises in Bievres - which means the village theatre company puts on a show during which we the audience elect this year's beauty queen to officiate at local events.

It is always the year's toughest assignment, technically. There is a lot of dancing and movement, stage lighting that changes all the time, obligation to work from a seat 5 rows back..

This year I decided to use only available light with the 80-200 f2.8 at f2.8 and 3200 ISO on the D300 with the lens mounted on a monopod, and avoid moments where the performers were moving fast.

- I could have gone to 6400 ISO on the D300 to get a faster shutter speed and sharper results but the noise removal would have softened all the images
- I could have used a D700 which would have given me 6400 ISO with no softening but I would have lost the ability to zoom out to the equivalent of 300mm whch is useful for catching detail.

Here are some of the results. All at f2.8 3200 ISO, uncropped with some exposure correction in RAW:

1. Opening 1/160s 135mm
2. The most photogenic candidate 1/125s 120mm
3. Tableau with the winner from 2 years ago 1/125 80mm
4. Matrix metering did a really good job with the stage lighting 1/250s 105mm
5. She came second 1/160s 200mm

[Singletracklovr]

Wow nicely done. I can't tell you had a light issue at all. Which is the goal, right?..

[Don Schaeffer]

The color is really off on the first one--is that the lighting?

[n8]

the lighting and lack of noise looks good. some could use a bit more saturation in my opinion, but I know you're concerned with the lighting at this point.

[Franglais]

The color is really off on the first one--is that the lighting?

Yes the lighting was all colours, as you can see from the light coming down from behind. I used tungsten light balance the whole time rather than asking the camera to try and figure out how to correct blue or red or green stage light.

The RAW file is still onlike so I tried ajusting the colour temperature. It looks like this particular light was Flourescent 3700 Kelvin. Here's the corrected example

Addendum: Same lighting for the last picture. I must remember that in case it's the same next year.

Thinking about it - I have a light issue in that there isn't enough of it but overall I want pictures that are sharp and show what I want to show. If I'd had a D700 then I would have been able to use 6400 ISO all the time, which would have improved the sharpness on the moving shots. For the few pictures that I did beyond "200mm" then I could have cropped them. With 12Mpix there is a lot of leeway.

So the D700 would have been a better choice.

[Frog]

This is no help, I'm sure, but doesn't everybody need a D700?

[Dylan8i]

This is no help, I'm sure, but doesn't everybody need a D700?

not those that prefer the extra reach of the 1.5X crop sensor.

[Franglais]

This is no help, I'm sure, but doesn't everybody need a D700?

The D700 doesn't work well with my favourite lenses (18-200VR, 16-85VR..) so I don't need one.

Coming back to my theatre pictures - the pictures I did this year are the best I have ever done but I would still like them to be sharper. Sharpness seems to be limited by subject movement more than anything else. Being able to shoot at 1/400s instead of 1/125s would be good.

I've gone as far as I can with the D300. Next year for this event - I'm going to hire a D3S. 12800 ISO..