advice for portraits in nightclubs

TwistedBtch

TwistedBtch

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no ive not sold my soul and become one of those 'let me take your photo oh thats £10 please drunk person' people

im taking some photos of my friend who is a podium dancer at a glam metal night, for the portrait aspect of my course. Does anyone have any tips for me? Im still a beginner and ive been practicing portraits at home but with better light that there will be in this club!

I understand about composition and thirds etc, I need more tips on how to get the best images with reduced light / club lighting.

Going to scour these threads but if anyone has any tips, please share!

I have a canon 1000d with just the bog standard built in flash and basic 18-55 lens
 
Shoot on manual, F2.8, 1/8th WITH external flash on ttl using a diffuser (pop up will not really work). Use 2nd curtain sync flash (so it fires and freezes at the end of exp) and move the camera to get some light trails and crazy colours.

have look here, http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150157932202927.298377.103632422926 not perfect, but it gives you an idea. You can just have a play about with settings and see what you get. The theory only works for part of the job, the learning is all part of the fun.
 
You are going to want to work with the ambient so it does not look like you were in a cave :)

So the built in flash may not cut it
 
Will you be doing it while the club is open, are a private shoot while closed, with eh kit you have not going to be easy, you will struggle as you will need to freeze the movement for a sharp shot, either with a high shutter speed by raising the ISO as high as possible without introducing to much noise (not sure what that will be on the 1000D) and wide aperture (so lowest F.Stop), or using flash, but the on-board will not be ideal.

If you can borrow some kit you be ideal as an external flash will make a big difference, and if you are getting the club to yourself for the shoot, studio lights would be even better if you know anyone you can borrow from.
 
When I started off I was doing club photography with a 400D and no external flash either. I would recommend setting your apperture to F3.5 (or the lowest number on the 18-55mm lens). Set your ISO to between 400-800. Anything higher than 800 will flood your photos with noise on the 1000D. Set your shutter speed to 1/3. I would also suggest you go into your settings and up the flash exposure as you only have the built in flash.

Some fun effects can be created by zooming in fast as you click the shutter. Also try rotating the camera quickly as you take the shot.
 
As above, I used to do this with a 400D and my settings were typically 1/5sec, as low an f as possible, and I tended to use ISO 800-1000
I was just using the pop up flash too, and other than "flickering" when auto focusing (which is really annoying cos the subject thinks you just took the photo - when actually your flash fires to help attain focus!!) the pop up flash worked fine.

Also one other thing I would do is set a custom WB at the start of the night - easy enough to do... take a piece of plain A4 paper - draw a circle on it - focus in on the circle and take the photo ensuring the sheet FILLS the photo so you might need to be zoomed in... then set your camera to Custom WB using the photo you just took.
Whether it makes a massive difference or not is debateable but even though I shot in RAW I preferred my Custom WB photos to the Auto mode defaults, so its worth doing IMO
 
futureal33 said:
As above, I used to do this with a 400D and my settings were typically 1/5sec, as low an f as possible, and I tended to use ISO 800-1000
I was just using the pop up flash too, and other than "flickering" when auto focusing (which is really annoying cos the subject thinks you just took the photo - when actually your flash fires to help attain focus!!) the pop up flash worked fine.

Also one other thing I would do is set a custom WB at the start of the night - easy enough to do... take a piece of plain A4 paper - draw a circle on it - focus in on the circle and take the photo ensuring the sheet FILLS the photo so you might need to be zoomed in... then set your camera to Custom WB using the photo you just took.
Whether it makes a massive difference or not is debateable but even though I shot in RAW I preferred my Custom WB photos to the Auto mode defaults, so its worth doing IMO
Click to expand...

How do you make a custom wb?
 
As I mentioned in another thread about shooting bands in clubs...set your camera to spot metering, forget the flash altogether and let the ambient and stage / spot lights do all the work. You don't need a fancy kit or any flashes to take good pix in a bar / nightclub. They'll only make your backgrounds go dark, you want you pix to look seamless. Shoot a little slower 40th, 30th etc to open up the backgrounds, set iso to 800. Then just look to see what you're getting, if backgrounds are dark slow it down a bit more. But remember the key to this whole thing is setting the camera to spot metering.
 
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