Capoeira Mâles - Part I

Recently I had the opportunity of working with a really great Capoeira group in the city, Capoeira Mâles.

There are some crazy skilled people in the group and as such...keeping up with the speed in low light can be a bit of a challenge....

Toward the end of the day as the sun is still visible, there's not such a huge problem.

But as you start to lose light there are all sorts of problems to deal with. It's exciting because Cristy's recently taken my old camera off my hands since I upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark II (and I love it...) and she's learning how to balance the triangle for different situations.

As light starts to disappear is when the aperture starts to open up, but f1.4 is maybe not so good for trying to focus on people flying everywhere through the air while I'm making sure not to get my own block knocked off.

Then the ISO is going to start creeping upward, but my personal limit is around 2500 on a 5D and even then it's not great at a certain point.

Cristy in action with the umbrella

So...what to do¿? Well if Cristy's not busy I highly recommend you take her along! She was invaluable (as always). I tried to get her to light faces as best she could but quickly realized how ridiculous those instructions were. People move around in the circle and are facing different directions almost at the same time. Nevertheless booming the light with a shoot-through umbrella so that it caught the action in the circle while still scattering just enough light to be able to see others standing around the circle worked out really well, but test shots have to happen pretty fast to be able to dial in the right settings - for more on that see this post, this post or even this post.

It was a lot of fun and I have a lot of respect for Capoeira and those who have spent countless hours learning how to do it - it's a really beautiful mix of dance and martial arts and I should probably put down the camera and give it a try myself actually....

Stay tuned for Part II....