party photos

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Watersedge

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Ian
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Ive been asked to take photos at a friends daughter 16th birthday party. Is there any tips anyone can give me on tje best way to cover this event. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
 
I did a friends 18th party and at the time I was limited by my lenses. You need to use a fast lens or get a flash for the evening. I had a slow lens so I had to use the flash for every shot, but I got some shots by bouncing the flash off the ceiling instead of straight on.
 
I would say an external flash is ideal. I wouldnt worry a slow lens as much. The main objective is bouncing the flash and getting a nice ambient exposure.
 
I have a speedlight 430ex. But lens isnt fast its 18 - 70 3.5 - 5.5 i think.
*** are the musg have shots at a party or would they be more candid shots
 
That will be fine. Just ensure you keep your flash pointed at the ceiling and I would say go for around ISO400 or so, maybe a bit higher to expose for ambient light and let the flash freeze the subjects.
 
Would you go aperture priority or speed priority. I assume its best to only use flash
 
Watersedge said:
Would you go aperture priority or speed priority. I assume its best to only use flash
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Go manual. Flash to ETTL, widest apertures and a slowish shutter speed would be good enough, depeding on how much light is available. Adjust accordingly
Keebsuk said:
Ian mate, you really do need to get yourself a book on the basics of photography.

Andy
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Have to agree with Andy. It will serve you well in the long run.
 
I agree but this was unexpected. Thats why asking how a professional would do it.
Ive alwas beem taught to use aperture priority....just wondered if it would be better to go speed priority. Woildnt a slow shutter speed not freeze movment though. Watare the bemefits to manal and not auto. Im sorting out doing a photo course but im doing the party in a couple of weeks and need to get it right
 
Watersedge said:
Woildnt a slow shutter speed not freeze movment though.
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The slow shutter speed is there to expose for the ambient light. The flash will freeze your subjects. Unless you are really wobbly, the photos should be pretty sharp.

Watersedge said:
Watare the bemefits to manal and not auto.
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Have you ever driven an automatic car? The car picks the gear for you but if you then decide to put your foot down, it might not be the correct gear. It does not know what you want it to do and the same applies to the camera. It will guess as best as it can however the choice itself may not be what you want.

Since the flash is going to be running in ETTL, its going to be pretty much in auto and providing enough light for all of your photos.

Try it out tonight. Close the curtains and set everything up, whack a few table lamps on. Fire off some shots, and they should come out pretty well. Just watch out for white shirts.
 
White shirts will be overexsposed. I was goinh to sjoot in raw aito white balance iso 400 like ypu said speed as slow as possible focal length x 1.6 to get the approx speed. *** would u call a slow speed
 
Watersedge said:
White shirts will be overexsposed. I was goinh to sjoot in raw aito white balance iso 400 like ypu said speed as slow as possible focal length x 1.6 to get the approx speed. *** would u call a slow speed
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No, generally white shirts will kill the exposure. It will underexpose which you need to watch out for.

My honest recommendation is now with the info, try it out before the event. Use random objects to test with to get an idea.
 
Thats what ill do ill shoot in raw so i can recover exsposure etc
 
Very good book on hot-shoe flash for Canon users - Speedliter's Handbook by Syl Arena £16 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speedliters...=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352212305&sr=1-3

For party pics, you need to check the venue. Ideal is a normal height white ceiling for bounce/fill flash while dragging the shutter to pull up the ambient. Then gel the flash to match the ambient colour.

I'd do it on Av, using +/- comp on the camera to adjust ambient brightness (changes shutter speed) and +/- on the gun to adjust flash (changes power). Lots of control that way, but keep an eye open for shutter speed getting way too long if it's quite dark. Then you have to decide if you want to bump the ISO and/or lower the f/number, or put up with some ambient blurring, or just let the background go dark.

Have a quick practise with a bounce card made from a small index card and rubber band, dead easy. Like this www.abetterbouncecard.com A Stofen works quite well in normal situations, or this is my favoured weapon for social situations - Lumiquest QuikBounce http://store.lumiquest.com/lumiquest-quik-bounce/

PS re exposure, remember the inverse square law - double the distance gives one quarter the light, two stops down. basically flash falls off very quickly with distance so try to keep all foreground subjects at the same distance. Check the LCD and histogram, and be sure to have blinkies enabled.
 
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Km going to have to read up on this is dragging the shutter a dlow speed
 
Whats gel the flash. I probly wont use on camera compensation until i understand it more
 
Would you use auto white balance and what if the walls and ceiling arnt white.
 
Keebsuk said:
Great post Richard, really informative. I can also vouch for the book, it's a really excellent read.

Andy
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Cheers :)

Watersedge said:
Km going to have to read up on this is dragging the shutter a dlow speed
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Dragging the shutter is just making the shutter speed longer to match the background ambient exposure level, then balancing that with the flash to the foregound (that will freeze any movement).

Watersedge said:
Whats gel the flash. I probly wont use on camera compensation until i understand it more
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Gelling the flash is adding a coloured gel filter over the front, so it matches the colour of the ambient. Usually a CTO (colour to orange) that will match the flash to tungsten light.

Exposure comp is easy, and pretty vital. If the flash/ambient balance is wrong in-camera, then you can't change that in post processing. Fill-in flash and slow-sync flash (ie dragging the shutter) is hard for the camera to get right as a) there are far more variables, and b) the kind of result you want depends both on the situation and subjective judgement.

Watersedge said:
Would you use auto white balance and what if the walls and ceiling arnt white.
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If there's a normal ceiling, it will be white or close to it, almost certainly. The usual problem is when people hire a bigger venue and then the ceiling is often too high and that makes bouncing very hard indeed. Best look to alternatives then.

Accurate colour is difficult with multiple light sources that you can't control. Just balance things up as best you can with gel, then adjust in post so that the main foregorund subject is right - that's the important thing. Auto WB tends not to be very good in those kinds of situations, and likely to vary shot to shot. Doesn't matter anyway if you're shooting Raw.

Buy that book!
 
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If the ******* was to fast *** effect would ot have on the image.
 
Watersedge said:
Thanls *** other colour gel filters are there
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Every colour of the rainbow. CTO is most often used, or greenish for fluorescent light but that comes in too many shades these days. Nightmare. That's a relative detail though, just get the foreground subject colour right.

Watersedge said:
If the ******* was to fast *** effect would ot have on the image.
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Assuming that reads 'what if the shutter was too fast' then the ambient exposure level in the background would go dark.

Watersedge said:
I will get the book
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Good. And can you please sort your phone out and avoid txt speak?
 
The typo that I'm assuming was made to render what I'm certain was supposed to be shutter into ******* is a very easy one to do and at the moment, the sibilance caused by my new teeth causes "sit" to come out rather less cleanly!

I was talking to a young lady teacher earlier today who is absolutely horrified at the number of adults who use text speak rather than English. She has found that children are less likely to be guilty of it than adults - and it seems to be as prevalent among the 20-30 year old teachers as it is the younger set. She is genuinely worried about the next generation who may be taught by semi-literate teachers.
 
Ian,

This image was taken at a wedding disco using a 50mm f/1.8 lens, 1/60s shutter, SB600 speedlight mounted on the hot shoe and rear curtain setting on the flash. Light was pointed straight up at the white ceiling.

The relatively slow shutter speed allowed the room ambient to bring out the detail and the flash froze the dancers.


disco dancers nr by disco39v8, on Flickr

Hope this helps :)
 
That does what im baffled over is a slow shutter yo freeze movement i assumed it would had to been a fast speed. Theres more to it than i thought
 
Watersedge said:
That does what im baffled over is a slow shutter yo freeze movement i assumed it would had to been a fast speed. Theres more to it than i thought
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The flash freezes the motion, the shutter speed only gathers ambient light.

You can use any lens and any aperture, as shutter speed isn't an issue.
I was shooting at 1 second using flash at a recent wedding. All people frozen solid.
 
Bristolian said:
Ian,

This image was taken at a wedding disco using a 50mm f/1.8 lens, 1/60s shutter, SB600 speedlight mounted on the hot shoe and rear curtain setting on the flash. Light was pointed straight up at the white ceiling.

The relatively slow shutter speed allowed the room ambient to bring out the detail and the flash froze the dancers.

<snip>

Hope this helps :)
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Rear curtain sync isn't active until below 1/30sec... ;)
 
Might be different with Nikons - check the manual to make sure but I think Hoppy's right.
 
Watersedge said:
I agree but this was unexpected. Thats why asking how a professional would do it.
Ive alwas beem taught to use aperture priority....just wondered if it would be better to go speed priority. Woildnt a slow shutter speed not freeze movment though. Watare the bemefits to manal and not auto. Im sorting out doing a photo course but im doing the party in a couple of weeks and need to get it right
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You've had some great advice here, but its clear you're putting no more effort into learning this than you ever did.

This might have been 'unexpected' but you could have learnt tons in the last 6 months. The basic understanding still isn't there, and there's no excuses, there's probably a thousand posts on the forum explaining how a flash exposure mixed with ambient will work.

When you're not here asking questions, how often do you lurk just reading for information? Which sections? How often do you just get out your camera and experiment? All of that is free knowledge that you don't even have to look hard for.

In your shoes, every post in People and Portraits, Photography, Business and the lighting section is relevant and could teach you something you have told us you need to know.
 
I understand now how flash works and the sinc...and how to get the ambient up in the background in relation to the shutter speed being slower. Thanks guys for your help here. Ill try all this out on the weekend and experiment to see the different affects. Ive ordered that book i was recommended previously
 
Watersedge said:
White shirts will be overexsposed.
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Teshi said:
No, generally white shirts will kill the exposure. It will underexpose which you need to watch out for.
.
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I understand what you are saying - ie that a predominantly white subject will be rendered grey if you don't compensate - however Ian was partly right the first time - although white shirts on their own won't overexpose if they are white shirts under a dark suit the meter may well try to expose the dark suits at 18% grey and subsequently over expose and blow the whites.

Personally i'd either meter from a neutral tone , or just use the histogram and trial and error
 
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