What settings and lens would photographers use to shoot a fashion show catwalk?

Because Fashion show catwalks see less of my equipment, I don’t have a special lens. Although my very first lens for the runway was a Canon 70-300 so that I could capture the whole runway at any interval. It was only in use for the first day. I realized immediately that there is no point shooting far from the end of the runway where the models come in and step out of the catwalk. I quickly started waiting until the model reached a certain point in the runway. I wanted a lens with some zoom that was not to much zoom as my subjects are never far away from me so I would never need anything over 150mm.

An great mid-price lens for Runway fashion photography is the Canon 24-105mm L Series. It has decent zoom with fast focus since during runway shows you don’t have the freedom to move around as much.

This photo was taken with a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS at the the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Swim final walk through of Belusso Swimwear

As far as settings, I could not tell you exact settings I used on the camera above without checking the EXIF data (a bit too lazy to do that and answer ? and that would depend on the shows lighting. But you will want the highest shutter speed settings with a slower aperture combination due to the movement of the models and the garments. Something about an F6 with 1/125th. (Again, that depends on how the runway is lit. Some are really blown out runways, and others have dramatic spotlights)

This show had artificial fog durring thier show.

Here was a show which had one sided natural light and the other a warm spot light.

This one used mixed light in a translucent tent toward evening.

This show used a brighter front lighting.

On this one you can see the spots of light along the runway.

This one only had one moving spotlight with a lightshow in the backdrop.