Some good news and some flash advice wanted please

ShawWellPete

ShawWellPete

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My son Christian won a national bravery award yesterday at the House of Commons. He goes to an acting/dancing club called Stagecoach and he was nominated when they found out about his illness a few years ago (www.christianblandford.com)

The awards were at a function room in the House of Commons, with very low false ceilings made of draped fabric (cream coloured) and very orange tungsten lights.

I took my D700 24-70 and 70-200. Usually, at parties for example, I set up a couple of flashes off camera but I only had 1 SB-600 with me and there wasn’t anywhere obvious to set the flashes up, so I left the flash on board.

I was a bit disappointed with the photos to be honest, I have been able to rescue a few but wondered if anybody had any advice as to how I could have done better. I can’t post any photos at the moment, but will hopefully be able to this evening, so any advice will have to be quite general.

The lighting was fairly dim, I was probably getting 1/60 sec F2.8 ISO 4000 with it very much overhead so little light getting into eyes from the ambient.

I played about with various settings but generally set the flash to TTL and tried to bounce it off the ceiling, maintaining a relatively high ISO to get some of the environment lit while keeping the shutter speed 1/focal length.

Anything else I should have done?
 
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Did you gel the flash to close the gap in colour temperatire between the room lighting and the flash? Having orangey yellow rooms and blue people is an odd look, and a tricky one to deal with. You won't find a white balance setting to suit both extremes. Geling the flash with a CTO gel will match the colour temperatures and allow you to tune out the colour cast across the subject and room. If you want to reatin a little warmth in the room, but have a "clean" look for the subject then you could maybe use a 1/2 CTO gel in order to leave a small gap in colour temperature.

I've had to shoot at 200mm, f/2.8, 1/60 and 3200 ISO at a wedding, so pretty close to your shooting conditions. I used a tripod, which surely helped with sharpness, but I have it on good authority that if I timed my shots to coincide with slack periods of movement I I might have got away with shooting at 1/30 and 1600 ISO, for more agreeable results. Of course the failure rate might have gone up, but you only need so many keepers.

Hard to give specific advice without seeing your results and what you don't like about them.
 
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Thanks for that Tim, I should have taken my gels for sure. The colour balance is a nightmare, I'll put the shots up later so you can see.

I must admit though I feel a bit better now,I stuck them on facebook and my friends and family love them. I guess technical perfection is not always what people want.
 
If the colour balance is a big problem you might try a B&W conversion.

Of course, like you say, non togs focus more on the subject, the scene, the occasion and the memories. For them the technical minutiae are not important. You only have to look at Facebook and the explosion of camera phone images to realise that.
 
Yep, massive well done to him!!! My wife used to work at Schiehallion and it wasn't nice at all sometimes.
 
Are these the ones on FB? I was thinking they looked rather nice ;)

Colour's a bit all over the place and some look a little thin (like they were underexposed and bumped back) but I've seen much worse.

If I'm in a generous mood, I'll usually warn videographers etc not tho stand behind me. If my flash is on camera it's generally pointed backwards :D. I aim to supply 1 - 1.5 stops of light from the flash and make sure I get enough light into the b/g to make that happen.

In really horrid rooms those Fong Dong diffusers actually work quite well.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Are these the ones on FB? I was thinking they looked rather nice ;)

Colour's a bit all over the place and some look a little thin (like they were underexposed and bumped back) but I've seen much worse.

If I'm in a generous mood, I'll usually warn videographers etc not tho stand behind me. If my flash is on camera it's generally pointed backwards :D. I aim to supply 1 - 1.5 stops of light from the flash and make sure I get enough light into the b/g to make that happen.

In really horrid rooms those Fong Dong diffusers actually work quite well.
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Thanks Jonathan, they're the ones, I think you're being kind!

You are they were all pretty pushed and pulled in Lightroom, rather than underexposed they were a bit dark in the wrong places so they had some fill light added and then black's reintroduced then sharpened, then noise reduced.

I have a GF diffuser, so I think you're right a gelled one of those would have been ideal.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I aim to supply 1 - 1.5 stops of light from the flash and make sure I get enough light into the b/g to make that happen.
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So let's say you are in manual mode and at 2.8 at 70mm, so for a shaky old man like me at 1/100 sec. Set ISO so it is under exposing by 1-1.5 stops set the flash at TTL pointing somewhere that it'll bounce into the subject and off you go?
 
Pretty much ;)

Except for f4. And maybe a bit slower on the shutter... Camera in manual for a generally illuminated bit of the room (no massive hotspots when you set it up). Flash on TTL-BL so it does the hard maths for you.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Pretty much ;)

Except for f4. And maybe a bit slower on the shutter... Camera in manual for a generally illuminated bit of the room (no massive hotspots when you set it up). Flash on TTL-BL so it does the hard maths for you.
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Great, thanks, I set the flash on TTL-BL, I understand that this is supposed to try to balance the flash with the ambient. What does it actually do to the flash power though :thinking:
 
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ShawWellPete said:
Great, thanks, I set the flash on TTL-BL, I understand that this is supposed to try to balance the flash with the ambient. What does it actually do to the flash power though :thinking:
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It's not the power (exactly) it's the way it meters. It counts the ambient light in the flash metering calc. It gets a bit techie :nuts: - there are 2 meters in a Nikon one for ambient and one for flash. BL biases the use of them.
 
Pete, given the difficulties you described I reckon you did a fine job. The pictures look plenty good enough to me, and as memories for you and your lad, priceless.

I guess a flash bracket might have concealed the flash shadow better for the portrait oriented shots, but who other than a photographer would worry about that?

Enjoy the photos. :thumbs:
 
I think they are lovely pics. A huge congrats to your son :) I love the pic where he has one sock up one sock down! Priceless!!!
 
ShawWellPete said:
Here we go
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Those are brilliant! :thumbs:

What the heck are you fussing about. Really, what's the problem? Yeah, sure I can see some difficulties with the light but they're really pretty minor. Unless I've got it wrong and the carpet was actually red or something.

Technically they're very much on the good side of acceptable, not bad at all, but far more importantly, there are some really good captures of the day. I bet there wasn't a dry seat in the house and you've captured that superbly. Well done to you and your lad.

Edit: yes, the sock - superb :D And the first shot is technically excellent. Lady with the watch (any relation?) great capture :)
 
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Doddy1974 said:
I think they are lovely pics. A huge congrats to your son :) I love the pic where he has one sock up one sock down! Priceless!!!
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Thanks mate, that sock made me laugh too.

HoppyUK said:
Those are brilliant! :thumbs:

What the heck are you fussing about. Really, what's the problem? Yeah, sure I can see some difficulties with the light but they're really pretty minor. Unless I've got it wrong and the carpet was actually red or something.

Technically they're very much on the good side of acceptable, not bad at all, but far more importantly, there are some really good captures of the day. I bet there wasn't a dry seat in the house and you've captured that superbly. Well done to you and your lad.

Edit: yes, the sock - superb :D And the first shot is technically excellent. Lady with the watch (any relation?) great capture :)
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:lol: that's very kind mate, the truth is with a bit of Lightroom editing I managed to make the best of a bad bunch. I'd have preferred to get them better in camera and not have some of the issues. On camera flash is so much harder to nail when I am used to having more control, even on my snapshots. Funnily enough I used to always take a GF lightsphere with my camera stuff and I got out of the habit, on this shoot it would have been ideal.

The lady with the watch is my wife and the lady behind her is my mum, both look pretty proud eh?
 
I've had white balance issues before between flash & orangey light, but I think you've pretty well in post processing to balance them fairly well. The gel on the flash is the way - and I forgot mine to!!

Well done to your son. You must be very proud.

Glenn

http://www.gmatherphotography.com
 
These are well good pics..your son looks well chuffed :thumbs: you and your wife must be very proud :love:...they will be looked at many times over the coming years.. well done to your son superb :thumbs::thumbs:
 
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