Flash photographs in pub / working mens club

[freefall]

I'm going to be taking some shots of people in a working mens club. You know, the usual capture the night shots.

But one of the important things I will be doing is to take photo's of everyone as they arrive. They will be near a wall and that's it!

I'm not too sure how high the ceiling is but hopefully it will be enough to bounce it off the ceiling.

I have a canon eos400d and a speedlite 430 ex II. I'm very new to the speelidte and someone has recommended putting the 400d into P mode and shooting away. But because of shutter speeds of 1/60 I don't get much of the background lit up and behind the subject becomes a bit dark. I can put the 400d into manual and get shutter speeds of 1/10 or 1/20 to get a bit more light onto the sensor so the background isn't too dark.

The thing is....I worry that if I use a slow shutter speed of 1/10 that the subject might come out blurry. I know that the flash should make the subject sharp but I'm just not convinced it will. Maybe I'm missing out on something? Maybe I can change the flash sync setting to second curtain?

Dilemma or what! Wish I had more time with the flash before being thrown in at the deep end!

 

[Legacy]

I'm going to be taking some shots of people in a working mens club. You know, the usual capture the night shots.

But one of the important things I will be doing is to take photo's of everyone as they arrive. They will be near a wall and that's it!

I'm not too sure how high the ceiling is but hopefully it will be enough to bounce it off the ceiling.

I have a canon eos400d and a speedlite 430 ex II. I'm very new to the speelidte and someone has recommended putting the 400d into P mode and shooting away. But because of shutter speeds of 1/60 I don't get much of the background lit up and behind the subject becomes a bit dark. I can put the 400d into manual and get shutter speeds of 1/10 or 1/20 to get a bit more light onto the sensor so the background isn't too dark.

The thing is....I worry that if I use a slow shutter speed of 1/10 that the subject might come out blurry. I know that the flash should make the subject sharp but I'm just not convinced it will. Maybe I'm missing out on something? Maybe I can change the flash sync setting to second curtain?

Dilemma or what! Wish I had more time with the flash before being thrown in at the deep end!

(For direct flash)
I went through EXACTLY the same situation (without the working mens club)....

Wack the Dial around to manual.......

Set the ISO to 200, Aperture to 5.6, shutter to 160th, attach the flash and bobs you uncle..........

If it's still dark, you can up the iso to 400, or drop the shutter speed to 125th or 100th/sec.....


The flash will sort itself out inline with the above settings (actually the flash will give you a guide range on the display to indicate the effective distance of the flash with the given settings.....)

If you adjust one setting at a time from the above.... then you can see the effective range changing accordingly....


have a play and see how it comes out before you get there !!

It worked for me

Phil....

 

[purpleclouds]

For bounced, add some flash compensation until it looks good!

 

[freefall]

brill, thanks! gonna have a play about with that right now. do you think that the 400d will have trouble focusing on people in the dark?

 

[Legacy]

Nope !!

the Flash has AF beams that aid focusing in low light !!

Can you mimic the light that you will get in the pub ? i.e. turn the main light off and just have a lamp on in the corner or similar......? this will then stress test your set up...

Phil

 

[freefall]

yeah I will do a mini set up and have a bash. just been doing some tests from the settings above and got some good results. even got some good ones at 1/20th and bounced the flash off the ceiling of my front room. pretty impressed, it was like daylight all over again lol!

so, I hold the shutter half way down and the AF points (either one or multiple) light up red.... Legacy, does the speedlite have AF beams that sense where I am focusing onto, even in low light?

 

[Legacy]

If you look at the front of the Speedlight, it will have a RED square ..... in a simialr fashion to a TV remote.......
It emits beams to aid the camera to focus lock on.......

If you put the flash on the camera, (in a darkish room) point it to a wall and half press the shutter and you will notice the red 'laser beams'

hope that helps

Phil