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Party Photography – tips please!
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Last week I just got delivery of my new 400D, Sigma 17-70 and Canon 50mm. This weekend was the first time I got to use it properly, at a Halloween party. I have not had enough time to play with it and figure out the best settings etc but I just gave it a lash anyway. At first I was kind of disappointed case I was getting better photos with other people handheld camera than my own which is five times the price. I was alternating between full auto, aperture priority and Night Photography and getting mixed results. I played with the ISO a little too. I know it is a difficult environment, a dark room with random light, people moving about etc.
Anyway, I have another one next weekend and would like some advice from you guys on how to get nice shots in an environment like this.
ThanksI would say that if you are using a slow shutter speed (night photography mode) a tripod is must, a remote shutter release would also be handy or else use the timer. I also find the built-in flash isn’t very powerful, for indoor use the canon 430 Ex speedlite would be a good buy.
Dave.
Your best option is to set the camera on P and get yourself a 430EX flash as Seaview says.
If that’s not an option, you should set the following on your camera:
Turn Dial to Shutter Priority TV
ISO to 800 (or even 1600 if you can’t get a shutter speed as below)
Set shutter speed to between 1/50 to 1/100 second
Leave aperture alone
pop up the flash
if you can, buy one of those cheap flash diffusers for the built-in flash, i think they retail for around ?10(E15)Hold the camera as steady as possible and try to stay at a focal length(Zoom) of 17-50
This is not an ideal solution, you should also go to your camera settings and go to the parameters setting and go to the one with the most sharpening, which will help a little. This is a makeshift workaround for not having a decent flash, there is nothing that will fix this completely EXCEPT for having a better flashgun.
Let us know how you get on :)
Richy…
Best piece of advice I can give is, leave the 400D at home and take your compact. Good camera equipment and parties don’t go together, you will spend too much time later in the night looking after your investment, never being able to leave it out of your hand/sight.
All it takes is one drunken dunderhead to fall/upchuck/whatever and your camera is ruined. In that type of environment you will get just as good a photo with your compact…….MikkaWell, I’m going to buck the trend here and say ignore (almost) all of the advice you’ve been given above! Get yourself a flash unit then set the camera to manual mode and at an choose an ISO of about 400-800 and select a slow shutter speed of between 1/15 to 1s and an appropriate aperture to match and let the flash look after itself. You will have to experiment a little, but what you should be aiming for is getting exposures that are reasonably well exposed with quite a bit of movement in them. What you should end up with are images which are both sharp and blurred at the same time.
Experiment away – it’s digital! And don’t forget to enjoy the party!!!
Fully agree with thorsten! Gotta love some slow sync stuff…makes dancing/party pics come alive.
Thorsten wrote:
Well, I’m going to buck the trend here and say ignore (almost) all of the advice you’ve been given above! Get yourself a flash unit …
erm, isn’t that the advice we gave him??? LOL
richy5497 wrote:
Thorsten wrote:
Well, I’m going to buck the trend here and say ignore (almost) all of the advice you’ve been given above! Get yourself a flash unit …
erm, isn’t that the advice we gave him??? LOL
Yep! That’s exactly why I used the term “almost” in brackets :wink:
I got great results at a wedding last week.
I shot in 2 modes. Full Auto and let my speedlight go to work. It might be an idea also to get a few drinks on board and grab a few people and ask them to pose for you, You can get some great shots like this.
I also shot in shutter priority, set my shutter speed to about 160sec ISO 400 to 800 and once again my speedlight gave enough light to capture some very nice shots, but you have to be within range, theres no point being 40 feet away.
If you shoot in Raw you should have enough EX comp in your raw editor to brighten them up if there a little dark.
Hope this helps.
MaxThorsten wrote:
set the camera to manual mode and at an choose an ISO of about 400-800 and select a slow shutter speed of between 1/15 to 1s and an appropriate aperture to match and let the flash look after itself. You will have to experiment a little, but what you should be aiming for is getting exposures that are reasonably well exposed with quite a bit of movement in them. What you should end up with are images which are both sharp and blurred at the same time.
Thorsten, tried this tonight with my kids running around the house here in their halloween costumes, worked a treat !
Cheers :)
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