Shooting detailed scenes at 1.8?

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The Masked Unit

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Hi there,

I've been asked as a favour to take some pictures of an event which will involve shooting a crowd from above. Naturally I want to get as much detail as possible so my natural response is to do so at somewhere around f.11-16, but I suspect that the lighting will not be great and as such, I might struggle to use a short enough shutter speed to freeze any crowd movement (although I have a tripod, which will help).

Obviously going for a higher ISO would be a good start, and as there's no huge rush to get the picture taken I can experiment a bit and see what works best, but I wondered if it might be worth switching to my 50mm 1.8 and shooting at 1.8 in order to let as much light in as possible and thus allow a lower ISO? I know what effect shooting something close up at 1.8 has but I also remember seeing a seminar online by Jeff Cable in which I'm sure he said that he took a night time landscape of a city from a distance at 1.8 or maybe even 1.4 in order to let in more light, and didn't have to worry about losing detail because the subject was in the far distance. If that principle's true, how far away would something need to be in order to not have to worry about losing detail? E.g. a balcony directly above a crowd? I'd appreciate any pointers at all really.

For reference, I shoot RAW and am pretty competent in Lightroom, so that's something to take into account.

Thanks!
 
The distance at which you're focusing affects the range at which sharpness is acceptable, yes. If you can come up with more accurate measurements you can use this as a guide for how well what you're looking for will work.

So on a Canon 7D, 50mm focal length at f/1.8 and focused at 10ft you'd have less than a foot of acceptable sharpness. Focused at 20ft you'd have 3.3ft of acceptable sharpness - so it depends how far you are from them and how much of them you want in focus. You might need to play with aperture or ISO to get the results you want.

EDIT: Also, the tripod won't help you to freeze motion. The slower the shutter speed the more likely you are to imply motion (and lose the sharp effect you're after).
 
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Number45 said:
The distance at which you're focusing affects
EDIT: Also, the tripod won't help you to freeze motion. The slower the shutter speed the more likely you are to imply motion (and lose the sharp effect you're after).
Click to expand...

Sorry, what I meant was that in addition to using a fast shutter speed, I would also eliminate any camera shake by using a tripod, which I thought might allow a slightly slower shutter speed and thus letting slightly more light in. Obviously I'll want to keep it well under a second but thought maybe the tripod would mean being able to use 1/500 rather than 1/200, to pluck an example out of nowhere. I'm presuming every little helps when you're talking fractions of a second?
 
Thanks for the info on distance and how that equates to acceptable sharpness though - that's good to know. I guess another way around it would be shooting wider than I'm aiming for and cropping in LR to concentrate on the sharper portion nearer the middle of the sensor?
 
The Masked Unit said:
Sorry, what I meant was that in addition to using a fast shutter speed, I would also eliminate any camera shake by using a tripod, which I thought might allow a slightly slower shutter speed and thus letting slightly more light in. Obviously I'll want to keep it well under a second but thought maybe the tripod would mean being able to use 1/500 rather than 1/200, to pluck an example out of nowhere. I'm presuming every little helps when you're talking fractions of a second?
Click to expand...
The tripod will help steady the camera obviously, but you mentioned that you want to freeze motion so you're going to need a fast shutter speed otherwise the people (I'm assuming they're going to be dancing) are likely to be blurred. The speed at which people are moving around is going to determine how fast you need to be to freeze everyone, so you'll probably need to experiment a bit on the night.

The Masked Unit said:
Thanks for the info on distance and how that equates to acceptable sharpness though - that's good to know. I guess another way around it would be shooting wider than I'm aiming for and cropping in LR to concentrate on the sharper portion nearer the middle of the sensor?
Click to expand...
If you're shooting down from a balcony with a prime lens won't your options be limited in that respect? Doesn't seem like there's a lot of scope for movement. A wider lens will allow you to crop, but the likelihood is you'll be using a smaller aperture so you're still going to have issues with getting the right amount of light in while retaining an acceptable shutter speed for motion, and ISO for image quality.
 
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Number45 said:
If you're shooting down from a balcony with a prime lens won't your options be limited in that respect? Doesn't seem like there's a lot of scope for movement. A wider lens will allow you to crop, but the likelihood is you'll be using a smaller aperture so you're still going to have issues with getting the right amount of light in while retaining an acceptable shutter speed for motion, and ISO for image quality.
Click to expand...

Yes, very good point!
 
It depends on how big the crowd is and how much light is available...
But I imagine it is going to be something like the evening ceilidh shots starting at image 37 in this set.
http://www.wild-landscapes.co.uk/Blog/2013-07-12-Priddy-Folk/30629170_qdcVvF
Full meta data is available under Show Details

Those were shot with a 50mm f1.4 and where I have stopped the lens down slightly the ISO has got really scary.
One of them is at f7.1 and only gave me 1/30s at ISO 12800 :|
When the shutter speed is as slow as 1/30th the motion blur is extreme enough that it has to be a key part of the composition.
I find 1/125s is a better starting point for 'conventional' shots, but this means using a wide aperture giving not a not of depth of field.

There's nothing wrong with using a wide aperture for a dancing crowd, but you have to decide who is going to be the main subject, expose for them, pan with them, not worry about he rest of the image and keep your fingers crossed.

In summary - review the images as you are taking them and experiment.
 
The Masked Unit said:
Obviously I'll want to keep it well under a second but thought maybe the tripod would mean being able to use 1/500 rather than 1/200, to pluck an example out of nowhere. I'm presuming every little helps when you're talking fractions of a second?
Click to expand...

you've got this the wrong way round ,,if you can handhold a camera at 200th ,putting it on a tripod and then using 500th is pointless
 
This is a pretty handy guide for this stuff. You can stick your camera, focal length and aperture in and it'll give you a good guide as to how much of your scene is going to be acceptable sharp for any given focus distance.

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
 
For party/event type photography I tend to use manual mode 1/100-125 f6.3 and adjust the power of my flash depending on the ambient light and whether I can bounce it or using a diffuser of some kind.

You haven't mentioned that you can't or don't want to use a flash. I know it can look a little unnatural but sometimes it's a good compromise to get sharp image without motion blur.
 
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