Make sure that you are using a high speed lens. My website, http://www.michaelroud.com has a lot of information on this type of photography. My website also specializes in actor headshots in los angeeles california. Actor headshots is extremely important and involves many of the same techniques as shooting dancers. Lighting is important, as is shutter speed when the actor is moving from one pose to the next. Many professional phtoographers in los angeles ca under-rate this one aspect. My video http://www.actor-headshots-losangeles.com also exhibits these principles.

A very concise run through many of the nuiances of dance photography, particularly applied to dancesport. However I disagree with the above quoted statement.

The crucial factor is a photographer who anticipates. Knowing the dance is essential – either as a dancer, or to have attended rehearsals and to note when best a photo opportunity will arise.

An entry level DSLR will have minimal lag, which is alright. Continuous shooting is less an issue because if you time the shot well, you only need 1 capture. A great way to practice timing for action (be it sport or dance) is to sit in front of a television and watch recordings, and with a camera to hand, take screenshots of the action.

However returning to equipment, what does matter (and Laurie correctly identifies) are lens choices, of which fast glass is paramount. If you don’t have fast glass available, then a strobe can help.

Laurie will be familiar with my photography (website is linked with examples). I use fast glass stopped down to f/5.6 to gather a bit more depth of field – it’s easy to capture one partner in focus and the other out at f/2.8 or less. To compensate for this I’m not afraid of using a high ISO value.

There are many other technical aspects that I could go into, but that in itself could be a whole article – AF modes, knowing your lighting (which includes reflective surfaces, colour casts, gelling strobes, direction of light source, controlling shadows/highlights), nailing WB…

I should note that this is me being critical, drawing from my years of dancesport photography, but as a starting point, a really great effort Laurie, and I wish I had this sort of knowledge at the first dance competition I went to.

–
Ed

http://picasaweb.google.com/hajma.miklos/Maffia#

These were shot with a Pentax k200d with a 80-200mm f/2.8 Tokina, and some with a 50mm f/1.7 Chinon (these are manual lenses). I was using them mostly around f/4.

Thanks for your additional tips – if you have any amazing examples of your own dance photography, don’t be shy about posting a few links as a comment here, I’d love to take a look!

In addition, there is another side of dance photography, is to capture stage dancing. This is easier, when you shoot in a well equipped theatre (lighting can be far better), and harder, because that is less predictable, if you don’t able to see the coreographies more than once.

But for the dancing, it helps me a lot being a dancer myself. Think musically at first, as poses, accents will be happen always at certain points of music. If you concentrate on the flow of the music, you can get really good shots.