My last evening in China was spent at the Chinese opera in Beijing. The music, story line, and staging are an interesting cultural experience, but it's the visuals I go for. The last time I photographed the opera in China was in the early 80's, and my medium format film camera, the Mamiya RB 67 at the time, had a top-end shutter speed of 1/400. Film back then higher than 400 ISO was too grainy, and this made it difficult to get sharp pictures of the costumed characters especially when they were in motion. This time with faster shutter speeds and ISO settings unheard of years ago, it was much easier to get what I wanted. I took this picture of a ribbon dancer using high speed continuous at 14 frames per second so I could capture every nuance of the positioning of the dancer and the ribbons. My settings were 1/800, f/8, 1250 ISO, and I used auto white balance due to the mixed stage lighting. I hand held my Canon 1Dx Mark II with a 100-400mm lens.
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