First time shooting indoor event - Saturday 14th April

Will James · 13 Apr 2012

Hi all,

Bought my first flashgun yesterday, a 430EX II to go with my 500D, kit lens, 50 1.8 and Tamron 70-300 VC USD.

I am shooting my first indoor event tomorrow night which is a 50th birthday celebration at a family friend's house. I was asked to do this yesterday hence the last-minute post.

I've been reading some tips on various websites, but my brain feels unbelievably scrambled by all the information. I was wondering if there is a general rule of thumb I could follow in regards to settings to get me started without getting unbelievably poor results? Any quick tips so I don't make a silly error?

I know I will be bouncing and have got a stofen omnibouncer, and I guess I can create my own bounce card (using an envelope?) in case ceilings are not low and white (although I'm pretty sure they are).

I want to use as much ambient light as possible so that the images look natural as opposed to flash-dominated, so I'm going to set a shutter of around 1/60. As for aperture I'll probably stick with 4.5-5.6 and vary depending on number of people and how much DOF I need.

I have been practising around the house and it seems that the following settings might be OK: 1/60, f/5.6ish and ISO400 on E-TTL. Should this be OK?

MrRiley · 13 Apr 2012

Hi Will

Sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what you are doing and the settings you suggest seem about right to me. Experiment as you go along and you will be fine. Here are a few tips that may or may not help.
Bounce flash off walls and doors and pretty much anything...not just ceilings. Dial in a bit of extra light on your flashgun if the images look dark.
Try using your 50 at f1.8 no flash.
Plenty of batteries
Try picking out happy faces from the crowd with the longest lens you have.
Shoot plenty and edit hard
Stick the camera on a tripod with a wide lens. Turn the flash off and shoot some long exposures. Maybe get the birthday boy to stand ( or sit) very very very still for you while the party goes on around him. Maybe even try a bit of fill flash to help freeze some action.

When the dancing starts, crank the shutter down a bit to maybe 15th/ sec ISO 800 F8 Wide lens. Direct flash and get amongst the action. Move the camera to give some party blur.

I hope this helps. Really good luck with your photography and I hope you get a chance to enjoy the party.

Roy

www.royriley.co.uk

HoppyUK · 14 Apr 2012

You seem to have got it sorted

Stofen is good for situations like that, easy and foolproof. Gel it to match the ambient. If you've not got a gel, grab a box of Quality Street and use the yellow/orange cellophane wrapper as a CTO.

Personally, I would shoot on Av and adjust the balance on flash and camera compensation independently. Manual is fine if the ambient is constant, but I always find there's someone sitting in a dark corner and Av will take care of that so you can concentrate on the shot. That kind of thing, but it's a personal choice. Go with whatever shooting mode you feel most comfortable with.

tdodd · 14 Apr 2012

I don't know what sort of ambient lighting you anticipate, but in my modestly lit living room exposure settings of 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO register no ambient light at all. Even at 1/60, f/2.8 and 1600 ISO the room is still very dim.

That's not necessarily a problem, as bounced flash can easily bring the levels up as far as necessary, if the room is not too large, but if your plan was to pull in plenty of ambient you might find a rethink is in order. Here are some test shots in my own living room....

In the first image below you can see how my lounge looks at 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO without flash. You can see the TV and my laptop, just, but the room is pretty much pitch black otherwise....

The next picture adds ceiling bounced flash at 0 FEC and then at +1 FEC. On the second row I have shot at 0 FEC with the bounce card extended and then again at +1 FEC. Finally there is a shot without flash once more, but opening the aperture to f/2.8 and raising ISO to 1600 and still the ambient is pretty insignificant.

I'd recommend firing off a few test shots to get your settings dialed in before you go to town with shooting the important moments.

u8myufo · 14 Apr 2012

tdodd said:
I don't know what sort of ambient lighting you anticipate, but in my modestly lit living room exposure settings of 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO register no ambient light at all. Even at 1/60, f/2.8 and 1600 ISO the room is still very dim.

That's not necessarily a problem, as bounced flash can easily bring the levels up as far as necessary, if the room is not too large, but if your plan was to pull in plenty of ambient you might find a rethink is in order. Here are some test shots in my own living room....

In the first image below you can see how my lounge looks at 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO without flash. You can see the TV and my laptop, just, but the room is pretty much pitch black otherwise....

The next picture adds ceiling bounced flash at 0 FEC and then at +1 FEC. On the second row I have shot at 0 FEC with the bounce card extended and then again at +1 FEC. Finally there is a shot without flash once more, but opening the aperture to f/2.8 and raising ISO to 1600 and still the ambient is pretty insignificant.

I'd recommend firing off a few test shots to get your settings dialed in before you go to town with shooting the important moments.

I think you have the best sets of test shots on the planet Tim

I suppose it is down to your own taste really, I am not saying it is in this case, but the first shot in the bottom row might well be more a better representation of what the room looked like in dim lighting as opposed to it being lit up slightly more. I too have the stofen diffuser and read a lot of reports that it seems hit or miss with the results even when used at an angle as suggested.

Will James · 14 Apr 2012

Thank you for the help everyone, I appreciate it and it's valuable advice!

MrRiley said:
Bounce flash off walls and doors and pretty much anything...not just ceilings. Dial in a bit of extra light on your flashgun if the images look dark.
Try using your 50 at f1.8 no flash.
Plenty of batteries
Try picking out happy faces from the crowd with the longest lens you have.
Shoot plenty and edit hard
Stick the camera on a tripod with a wide lens. Turn the flash off and shoot some long exposures. Maybe get the birthday boy to stand ( or sit) very very very still for you while the party goes on around him. Maybe even try a bit of fill flash to help freeze some action.

When the dancing starts, crank the shutter down a bit to maybe 15th/ sec ISO 800 F8 Wide lens. Direct flash and get amongst the action. Move the camera to give some party blur.

I hope this helps. Really good luck with your photography and I hope you get a chance to enjoy the party.

Roy

www.royriley.co.uk

Hi Roy, thanks very much for the tips. Funnily enough, the photos that this client saw were from a birthday party using my 50 1.8 at ISO 1600, so I will make sure I use it without flash again. However, I bought the flash as I did not know what the lighting conditions were going to be like and I've wanted one for a while anyway.

Also thanks for the tip on bouncing off walls and doors, I'll try to remember to make sure I make the best of my surroundings.

Unfortunately I don't have a tripod yet but I will definitely try to find a prop to do the long exposure, that's a brilliant idea and if the birthday lady can sit still for a few seconds that would be great!

HoppyUK said:
Stofen is good for situations like that, easy and foolproof. Gel it to match the ambient. If you've not got a gel, grab a box of Quality Street and use the yellow/orange cellophane wrapper as a CTO.

Personally, I would shoot on Av and adjust the balance on flash and camera compensation independently. Manual is fine if the ambient is constant, but I always find there's someone sitting in a dark corner and Av will take care of that so you can concentrate on the shot. That kind of thing, but it's a personal choice. Go with whatever shooting mode you feel most comfortable with.

Hi Richard, thanks for the help

That's a good point about matching ambient, I believe the lounge has spotlights in the ceiling as opposed to the more typical fitting, so I assume that the colour temperature of these will be higher? If I fail to get the ambient right I can always just shoot everything in RAW I guess.

With regards to your comment about Av and shooting in a dark corner, what does Av do differently to account for the less ambient light? Will it just lower the shutter a bit further? Sorry if that question sounds really basic but I want to make sure I fully understand so I'm as best prepared for these situations as possible

tdodd said:
I don't know what sort of ambient lighting you anticipate, but in my modestly lit living room exposure settings of 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO register no ambient light at all. Even at 1/60, f/2.8 and 1600 ISO the room is still very dim.

That's not necessarily a problem, as bounced flash can easily bring the levels up as far as necessary, if the room is not too large, but if your plan was to pull in plenty of ambient you might find a rethink is in order. Here are some test shots in my own living room....

In the first image below you can see how my lounge looks at 1/60, f/5 and 400 ISO without flash. You can see the TV and my laptop, just, but the room is pretty much pitch black otherwise....

The next picture adds ceiling bounced flash at 0 FEC and then at +1 FEC. On the second row I have shot at 0 FEC with the bounce card extended and then again at +1 FEC. Finally there is a shot without flash once more, but opening the aperture to f/2.8 and raising ISO to 1600 and still the ambient is pretty insignificant.

I'd recommend firing off a few test shots to get your settings dialed in before you go to town with shooting the important moments.

Hi Tim, thanks for the insight - I will have a fiddle with my settings when I get there to make sure I know how much ambient light I'll have to play with. If there isn't much, I'll dial in extra flash exposure and up the ISO.

HoppyUK · 14 Apr 2012

Will James said:
Thank you for the help everyone, I appreciate it and it's valuable advice!

<snip>

Hi Richard, thanks for the help That's a good point about matching ambient, I believe the lounge has spotlights in the ceiling as opposed to the more typical fitting, so I assume that the colour temperature of these will be higher? If I fail to get the ambient right I can always just shoot everything in RAW I guess.

The reason to gel the flash is you can't correct mixed colours light in post, you can only correct for one or the other. When in doubt, always go for the flash, because it's the main foreground subject light.

When gelling, it's hard to get the colours dead right every time because there are now so many shades of artificial light about, unless you have a hatful of gels and mess around a lot.

Most artificial light tends to be warm/tungsten, hence the popularity of light orange CTO gels. When in doubt, always under-gel the colour because that looks better than over-doing the correction. For example, a neutral subject with a slightly warmish background looks better than a blue background as a result of using too strong a gel. You can see the colours on the LCD of course.

Another way of minimising the shift is to whack up the flash, particularly the ceiling bounce, as that will fill the room with flash light more and reduce the influence of ambient.

With regards to your comment about Av and shooting in a dark corner, what does Av do differently to account for the less ambient light? Will it just lower the shutter a bit further? Sorry if that question sounds really basic but I want to make sure I fully understand so I'm as best prepared for these situations as possible

<snip>

With Canon, using Av at default setting will drop the shutter speed as long as it needs to go to balance. You have to keep an eye on it to avoid blur. Or you can change the default so that it will drop to 1/60sec, but no lower. You have to keep an eye on it, to avoid the background going too dark.

Every situation is a different set of compromises, and how you handle them is up to you. You are lucky here in that it sounds like the ceilings are normal height and white, and spot lights will probably be warm/tungsten. That's as good as it gets, should be fine.

FWIW, with fluid social situations I always use Av with flash on auto, and ready with FEC and EC as necessary. The camera can make those quick decisons far better than I can and is usually not far out.

For more static situations, like maybe you're doing several shots of a group or groups in the same location, I would note the Av settings then transfer them to manual, take a test shot and tweak it from there. With a bit of practise I can get that sorted in a few seconds, and then it's set and and locked, and will not alter if the groups changes from men in dark suits to girls in bright frocks. Or you can do much the same thing in auto using the exposure locks.

These things are largely a matter of personal choice. Go with whatever you're most comfortable with. The important thing is the get the shot, reasonably well lit, but don't miss the best poses and expressions because you're messing around with the camera. My experience with these kind of shoots is that they change fast, you have a few seconds to arrange the group and you need the first shot to be at least usable. Make sure you capture the moment first, and sort the technical stuff second.

Will James · 14 Apr 2012

That's brilliant help, thank you for taking the time to advise Richard!

I did some practice shots on my girlfriend last night playing with different settings while bouncing the flash. Here is my favourite:

1/50, f/8, ISO 200, 18-55 kit lens. No ambient lighting, all bounced flash

Becki. by | Photography by Will Nicks |, on Flickr

I know it's not the best compositionally or quality-wise with the kit lens but if I can get results like this tonight (albeit with more cluttered backgrounds) I will be pleased, and hopefully will the client!

HappySnappy1977 · 15 Apr 2012

How did you get on?

shutter_speed · 17 Apr 2012

The reason to gel the flash is you can't correct mixed colours light in post,

Just a thought, the adjustment brush in lr4 now includes white balance....obviously getting it right in picture is better but has adobe helped us get over this problem?