Using flash in a Marquee

tonyq

tonyq

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Hi all,
my son is getting married on Saturday, and the reception is to be held in a Marquee which I presume will be whitish in colour. My question is when taking photos with my Canon 600D/ 18/55 or 50mm 1.8 lens, 430ex flash, in the Marquee, afternoon/evening, should I be able to bounce the flash, or will it have to be straight on?. I have very little experience using flash so help please.
 
why not bounce the flash from a white reflector :shrug: as the Marquee could be quite high and you'll need a lot of flash power to light subjects below and you may and I stress may, get an unwanted colour cast from the Marquee fabric colour as they are normally off white / Cream in colour

You can (I Have) use a white paper plate to bounce the flash, simply fix to an upright flash head with elastic bands- simple yet effective


Plenty of advice/tutorials on YouTube :D

Oh, good luck on the day fella ;)


Les :thumbs:
 
Lez 325,
thank you for the advice, will a blank 6 x 4 photo paper/card do?. I presume the flash pointing to the roof, card facing to subject.
 
I will be shooting in RAW so should be able to adjust to get the correct white balance hopefully.
 
tonyq said:
I will be shooting in RAW so should be able to adjust to get the correct white balance hopefully.
Click to expand...

Maybe so.....

If one part of the scene is illuminated by ambient light and you add a yellowish flash (bounced off a yellowish canvas) then you are pretty much stuffed. Balance for the ambient and the rest will be murky yellow, balance for the flash and the rest will be sickly blue. To get both right takes a lot of work in post.

Either shoot no flash, shoot all flash or use a pocket reflector of some kind (I velcro white foam onto the flash). Or, you know, black and white.....
 
Depends on the marquee. My sister had an anniversary party and I took along my camera + flash. Found the photos had a yellow tint to them from bouncing the flash. The marquee was more of a "dirty white" and probably would have benefitted from bleaching.
 
Gel flash to join ambient colour spectrum then set wb (or just leave on auto). Shoot RAW. 1/4 CTS or 1/4 Cto gel.

This will turn the daylight coloured flash to the same warm spectrum as the ambient. Bounce the flash from right or left ensuring no direct light hits the subject. If your subject can see your flash tube then directlight is hitting them.

Crank up the ISO to 800, shoot as wide as poss (50mm @ 2.8 should be fine, just make sure you have a bit of distance to allow for the shallow DOF). Leave flash in ETTL mode

There are a couple of great tutorial on this.

Google tangents blog and have alook at the you tube tutorials from neil van niekerk.....he is a master at on camera bounce flash.
 
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