Hafla With Fujifilm - High ISO Wins The Day

I tried my first hafla with the new Fujifilm X-E2 camera system this last weekend, and learned many valuable things.

Haflas are dance shows organised by Middle Eastern and Bollywood groups to showcase their dancers. The music is loud, the costumes are wildly coloured, and the dancers are enthusiastic. Unfortunately in the past they have sometimes been constrained to perform in pretty dull venues - you can only make so much of a harem scene in a CWA hall...

This last weekend saw the stage of the Waldorf School in North Lake used...and that made all the difference. It is a professional-class stage with a good lighting setup and desk. Productions look good.

To avoid washing out the stage while the audience was watching, the organisers asked me to work without flash. I had done this before with mixed success - when  I used to put the ISO up past 800 on the old system the multicoloured electrical noise started to become bad. Well, I set my Fujifilm X-E2 gingerly to 1600 ISO and hoped for the best.

I was delighted to see that the colour was good and no noise was appearing - even given the fact that I had set a +1 sharpness on the jpegs. But the dancers were moving so fast that even with the 550-200 lens set to full aperture there was blur. So I risked setting it to 3200 ISO...

Better action stopping - still no noise. I could happily shoot from the aisles with the camera and lens on a Manfrotto monopod and not disturb anyone. Amazing how well 165 dB of drums and flutes hides the sound of a digital shutter...

Upon reading Rico Pfirstinger's book on the X -E1 I suspect I might have been able to boost that ISO to 6400 with even better results! I am looking forward to the Christmas hafla to find out.

Boost that ISO with Fujifilm X - with confidence.