Low-light portrait Photography "HELP"

Dan S

Dan S

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Dan Short
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Evening to all,

I really need some advise on night portrait photography! I have been asked to take portrait/people photographs on the back (outside) of a large pleasure boat while it sails down the thames.

The people that I will be photographing want the London sky line in the back shot as well. I am unsure of exactly how to keep them in focus & get the lights/detail of the background in also?

The problem being the boats moving, the only light available to me would be the Nikon SB600 I have.

The camera I will be using is my D200 for the night & probably a Sigma 24mm-70mm f2.8.

I won't be able to recce the boat before hand so test shot are a no go.

What I would like is poss is a few pointers on what to set the camera to, to get the desired results these people want?

Any advise would be of really big help to me.

Thank you in advance

Dan Short
 
Manual mode, take a reading from the background of the city lights and dial that in, then use the flash as fill. You might get a longish exposure for the background but the people will be ok as the exposure for them will be the duration of the flash.
 
The people are lit by the flash.
 
Photographing the people with the flash probably won't be a problem, however getting the background correctly exposed may be a bit more complicated.

I agree you'll need to work with the camera set on manual and you'll have to balance the background exposure to your flash. It's not going to be easy if you've no time to reherse.

Can you find out where the boat is sailing from and take some pictures of the background from the shore. This may help you decide what exposure time you'll need. Keep it as short as possible I would suggest. Problem is you want to include the skyline as well so you're going to need a decent depth of field which means a smaller than wide open apature Sort of defeats itself doesn't it.

If you can get some practice in first.

I don't know if you can do this on the Nikon, but can you get the flash to trigger on the trailing curtain of the shutter. If you have to give a longish exposure you don't want the people moving while the shutter is open. People tend to move as soon as the flash goes off. So having the flash fire at the end of the exposure should help reduce this.
 
Yep what everyone just said.

I do pretty much the exact thing every night (not on boats though lol). I use full manual with the following settings:

ISO: 400 - 800
Shutter: 0,3 to 1/10
Apature: 4.0 (the widest on my current lens).
White Balance: Flash (odviously as your gonna need the flash. You can just leave it on auto but I personally prefer doing it manually, you can also mix the WB up a bit for some cool effects. Don't even worry about this if you are shooting in RAW tho as you can just change it later).

I use to do it on ISO 100 but with 400D you get alot more of the background in.

Definatly use the flash though, it will freeze the action of the people and even if they move it won't blur them. Just don't put your exposure too long, just have it long enough to let the background show up.

If you put the exposure too short, it will just be the people with a black backround. If you have it too long, often what happens is that the light around the subject blurs/blends into the edge of their body (particularly their head) and looks pretty sketchy.

Just takes a bit of playing about with different settings. It's taken me a while to get all my settings working right.
 
Nice find Glen, that video does a great job of explaining the process :thumbs:
 
great link Glen, bookmarked for future viewing :thumbs:
 
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