How to: Shot Runway Show [Part 1]

There are many occasions people ask me about how to increase the success rate in shooting a runway show. Some questions posted to me are as follows: -

“What kind setting do you normally use?”
“Do you apply flash?”
“What kind of gears do you use to capture the show?”  [Note: I will discuss the last question in My Gear page]

Frankly, it’s not easy to capture a fashion show!

But…it’s not that difficult either to capture those moment if you know the basic

A Chinese saying: “ To get the job well done, you must first get the right tools and techniques” This phase goes a long way…

Note of lens use:

I have discuss some of the gears used in my GEAR page but I would like to highlight that if you can afford a lens with constant f-stop such as the CANON EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM or CANON EF 135mm f2 USM, bring that along as the constant f-stop help a lot especially you are using Zoom lenses. It keeps your exposure value constant regardless of your focus length.

Please do not use the short focus prime like the CANON EF 50mm f1.8 as you may need to stand very near to the stage and blocking the rest of the photographers at the back.

Recently I used the wide angle more often than I thought!

It’s simply amazing to cover the Models as well as the stage deco’ and gives my audiences a wider selection of images to chose from. (Traditionally most runway photographer uses the telephoto lens to captured the full body images and it’s rather bore to have the entire series of such full body images) Unless my client specifies to have full body coverage otherwise I will rather to have a right amount of mixture with some wide-angle images.

Let’s share some of my personal experience and I hope some of it may of help to you.
(IMHO, that is not right and wrong in photography and you are encouraged to try out various combinations to find something that suit your shooting style, your gears and the outcome that you desire.)

Settings:

Shutter Speed:

Catwalk Model at times walk faster then you can imagine so keep you shutter speed between 1/160s to 1/200s to capture /frozen the movement. Fast is the key word for me.

Depending on your lenses, the “1/ focus length” formula should be applied to avoid motion blur caused by your own movement.

Aperture Setting:

Balancing between the depth of field and exposure is important. Nevertheless, fashion show and runway event are part of indoor shooting so keeping aperture wide open will produce a better result.

Normally I set my aperture to f2.8 whenever is possible, this allow me to achieve a better shutter speed while setting a lower ISO to produce a much cleaner image. Wide-open aperture also helps isolating the Models and background through the “bokeh” effect. A moderate “bokeh” effect helps eliminating the busy background and “wash-out” the unwanted background.

If you intend to use the f1.8 to achieve the shutter speed you need or to render a much richer “Bokeh” effect, be caution that it’s very difficult to achieve focus point at such a larger aperture setting with a fast moving subject!

I will discuss the ISO setting, white balance and the use of Flashgun in [Part 2]....Stay tune!