First off, flash is the devil's tool and therefore not an option. With the rare exception of artsy-fartsy uses (such as the kinda gimmicky example at tribes.tribe.net/performan...3f50bc1407 ), flash destroys the ambience of a performance, both in the pictures and at the show itself. To me, the craft of shooting a show is capturing the best of the audience's actual experience and unless they're shooting gigawatts of light out of their eyes, flash is verbotten.

As for manual focus, I say if you can do it... do it! I could barely manual with any reliability using the little split-screen pentaprism in my old film body. Without that, I'd have no hope of a remotely sharp shot using todays digital bodies. IMHO, auto-focus is the only viable option (your mileage may vary).

Lord knows I've missed the focus on my fair share of shots (cue gratuitious use of Unsharp filter) but I think it starts with a fast lens that allows the maximum light into the thingymajigger that controls the autofocus. Slow lens (let's say anything above 2.8) are murder on focus in dark venues.

So I s'pose it comes down to technique. Some folks swear by the tracking functions of their autofocus. Never worked for me (maybe I just don't believe in the magic enough). I've tried some various approaches with mixed results. Out of the box with my first dSLR (which was my first auto-focus body), I went with the program-picks-the-focus-point tack. It works pretty good, since it seems to scout out the brightest thing with the most contrast and that's frequently what I'm shooting. It also kept my mind off the technical stuff and allowed me to concentrate on capturing the right moments. Heck, working the zoom while trying to get the "moment" confuses me. But then I got frustrated by dancers (especially of the gothy flava) that like to dangle their hands in front of their faces. In my book, eyes should be sharp, not rings on fingers. I tried spot focusing on a particular area, but that stymied the composition and elusive moment too much. These days I've been using the little pick-a-focus-point-manually joystick on the back of the camera to swap between three specific spots (which I park on the performers' face as I jigger and re-jigger the composition based on what's happening on stage). I work the twitchy trigger finger to half-press the focus everytime the performer moves closer or further (so I do that insanely too much, as you might imagine).

There's probably smarter ways (known by smarter photographers) to do this... That's just the way I'm currently attacking the dragon.

Chris,

In my experience, AF actually DOES work in low-light, and it's also faster and more accurate than manual focus, when properly applied.

The thing you might want to try if you have a Canon EOS camera is selective autofocus (SA). SA is where you "tell" the camera where to "look," in order to focus. Rather than having the camera analyze the scene, to produce the focus, instead you direct the focus point. On something like a Canon EOS 5D, or the newest 1D series, you can drive this process directly using the multicontroller knob.

It becomes very natural to control the autofocus point with your thumb on the multicontroller. You just select an important area in the scene, which is indicated by a red rectangle within the viewfinder. Manually directing the camera's focus point totally prevents focus lock on the background, or on the wrong object or person. Also, it allows you rather than the camera alone to take the best compromise on the very narrow hyperfocal plane that results in wide-aperture situations. This kind of situation can be ambiguous, and you resolve the ambiguity to your liking. An example is you have a tribal dance group that is spread out over a stage, so you have to pick one dancer to focus lock on ... so you pick a dancer most forward, or most in the back, depending on what is most interesting at that moment. Taking this selection is much better than forcing the camera to examine the whole scene, and autofocus works significantly faster having a dedicated region to "look" at which you have determined is most of interest. Other kinds of compromises can emerge with careful selection. After a while, you learn how to do it quickly, and it becomes almost unconscious.

You can alternatively use the quick control dial and main dial to control SA as well.

Blessings and Less,
Michael