Birthday party - photos

[nikond100]

I`m taking a few photos tonight at my husbands Nan`s 90th party its being held in a hall and never being there before not sure how to photo it.

I have an old Nikon D100 with a 50mm 1.4 lens with a flash light, what sort of setting should I be shooting in?

More interested in the ISo settings as I do struggle with these.

Thanks

 

[tdodd]

I don't know what the high ISO performance of the Nikon is like, but as a starter for ten (and without knowing anything about the room - ambient lighting and ceiling height and colour) I'd shoot raw and start out with manual exposure set to :

1/80 at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO with flash bounced off the ceiling.

Obviously you have the option to open up wider than f/2.8 and drop the ISO (possibly), but you'll need to think about the dangers of focus (in)accuracy and DOF constraints.

Here's one of my old shots (I don't shoot in "party" environments these days) at similar settings, except 1/60 instead of 1/80 and no edits on this....

Even at 1600 ISO you can see the 30D has turned in a pretty clean performance with the exposure nailed....

It's perhaps a little on the warm side, which a slight white balance adjustment would fix, but otherwise I'm happy with the result SOOC. Actually I'm pretty happy with it even whilst on the warm side.

 

[Al Brum]

The older Nikons were not great with noise at high iso, neither were Canon. Set iso 800 and use the flash. Google for 'A Better Bounce Card'. There is a good tutorial on u-tube.
If you have to use higher iso go for it as a noisy pic is better than a blurred one or none at all.

 

[Robclarke]

If there is a white ceiling try to bounce the flash off that. It more flattering than direct flash.