What Setting On Nikon D3000 Should I Use For Theater?

I'm taking pictures of my high school's play during a rehearsal and I was wondering what settings I should use.

There's no best setting. You will have to go to the theater during a rehearsal or before hand and measure how much light you have. Use your trusty light meter to accomplish this task. If you are unfamiliar with using your camera on a manual mode, then you better start learning.

Theaters are usually darker places. You will need to open up your aperture completely, and up your ISO. Try to get 1/60th of a second shutter speed.

You need to get the right exposure with a fast enough shutter speed to not blur. I would suggest 800ISO and f/3.5. If you zoom in with the kit lens you will be at f/5.6 and likely increase blur by slowing the shutter speed or darkening the exposure if you are in manual.

Overall, it depends on the lighting plot. It can be dark as the night itself and brighter than the sun during a play within seconds.theater is not an easy thing to shoot. My suggestion is to put your camera in A mode, make it say 3.5 and find the ISO button and set it to 800 or 1600. Then press the +/- button and make ti say-0.3 ev. Then keep an eye on your shutter speed so that it doesn't go below 1/30th. And try to stand very still when you take the picture.

I have been shooting theatrical plays for 5 years now, and the setting I use is Manual.

A monopod and fast lenses (f/2.8 or better) are your best friends for that environment. For rehearsals, you should be allowed to use a flash. The pop-up flash on your camera will probably not be powerful enough, you will need a hot shoe flash like the SB-600.

Shoot on manual with the following settings:

ISO: 100
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 1/4000

At least ISO 800 (1600 if not grainy enough for you), Aperture priority, smallest f/number. If Auto White Balance doesn't get it right, test the different settings to match the stage lights. They'll be mixed so if Auto does it decently, stick to it.

You need to shoot in manual mode (page 71 in your user's manual). Theater lighting is too hard for a camera light meter to figure out reliably. Use a low f-stop number (aperture wide open), something like ISO 800, and adjust the shutter speed to give you a decent exposure. Use the highlight (zebra) mode to help you set your exposure (page 94). You want to minimize the overexposed (blown out) areas. It you only have a few small blown out areas, that's ok. Really bad to have large areas blown out.

Manually set your white balance to match the lighting, usually tungsten for theater lighting. You may want to do a custom white balance. If you have a gray card, shoot that under a non-gelled light so you can white balance in post processing

I like using a single focus point. I focus on my subject, then compose the image. Since you will be using a low f-stop number, the narrow depth of field makes focusing on the correct object critical.

Turn off the AF-assist illuminator. It is very annoying to the subjects (page 43).

You may want to use a tripod or monopod since you'll be shooting at a fairly low shutter speeds. Benching the camera on props also works.

Learn to hold your camera the proper way to minimize camera shake if you're shooting without a tripod or not benched.