Shooting in the dark

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thestablelondon

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Alan
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Hey there again!

Not long now till England kicks off hopefully not Their final match of the world cup but who knows.... Anyways!..

The other evening i was shooting in a friends flat using my off camera flash and umbrella doing some portrait shots and when i wanted to shoot with not natural light.....It was very dark......Strange huh!

Now at this point in time the AF really struggled to do its job and switching to MF i still struggled to focus on the subject. What do you guys do in similar situations? light a match, shine a torch..keep the house lights on or fire the flash until you get it right?

Its a question that i have been meaning to ask!

Cheers new friends.
 
All my bodies have AF assist lamps which throw enough light at the subject for the AF to lock on. If I have the SB-600 flash mounted, that throws a grid of light at the subject for the same reason. Obviously, that's not ideal for candids but for portraits works very well.
 
af assist on a speedlight/speedlight transmitter is good but expensive

turning on a light works well

was gonna say better bodies have better af but a d300 is meant to have amazing af :S
 
You need to use Single focus mode (not Continous) to get either the cameras or the attached speedlight's AF assist light to come on. Then it shouod be fine unless your subject is very far away.
 
one time i used a torch. well actually i got my guinnea pi..... i mean model to shine their mobile phone at their face while i locked on to focus. worked a treat :)
 
you get hotshoe mic holders and they taake a torch pretty well, also you can tape them to the light stand
 
If you shoot at ISO100, at say F8, with the shutter at or near your Max Synch Speed (1/200?? 1/250??), you should find that you can leave the light on in the room. Take a test shot without the flash, if it comes out black you're sorted.

I've done this a few times. Just have a lamp on in the room to provide a little light for focussing and seeing what you're doing / shooting, then set the camera to overpower it.
 
+1 for MatW normal light bulbs are far too dim to be visible at your shooting settings, only point to watch out for is reflective surfaces where the light sources may show up, usually these reflections are very small and easily removed in PP, however its worth bearing it in mind in order to minimise the amount of PP required
 
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