There are so many instances when photographers are shooting in low light circumstance and the subject or subjects are moving fast. This is a recurring and vexing problem. We constantly have to balance the desire to use a fast shutter to freeze the action versus raising the ISO too high versus the depth of field issues. In a situation like this performance of the Barong dance in Bali, Indonesia, blurring the performers in any amount wouldn't work. There is no sense abstracting, and thus obscuring, such fascinating detail. Therefore, once you determine how fast the shutter speed should be (1/200 in this case), the next question is how much depth of field is needed. I chose an aperture of f/8 because that gave me a moderate amount of DOF to cover the stage (I was set to a focal length of 47mm on a 24-105m lens). Those two settings forced my ISO to be 2500, and although the lowest ISO is always best in terms of reduced noise and picture quality, I felt that the newer cameras can handle that especially with the software we have available to reduce noise in post-processing. I used a Canon 5D Mark III for this image. My newer camera, the Canon 1Dx Mark II, handles noise even better than the Mark III, but I didn't have that when I shot this last year.
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