Indoor flash question

I'm going to a dinner tonight and I'm going to be taking some pictures for practice. It is at a restaurant with very yellowish lighting. There will be no natural or day light coming in. My problem is that I don't want to use flash but I'm not educated enough to know exactly which settings to tweak in order to produce a good photo at a fast rate with no flash. Any info would be great. Thanks.

Don't shoot fast. A flash needs a chance to recharge. It takes a new technique.

If you have an on camera (attached) flash...

It should have TTL mode, so set it to that (aka E-TTL or i-TTL). Set your ISO to 400, the shutter speed to 1/60 (or less for low light), then use a bounce card (or a white index card with a rubber band) on the flash head, tilt it slightly, using f/8 close in (one person) and f/4 for distance (a group).

For the pop-up, pop it up. Use the same settings above.

That's a start, anyway.

Your best bet is probably to boost up your ISO and have an open aperture (f3.4) adjust your shutter speed to about 1/60 and you should be okay. If you're shooting in Raw you will be able to adjust the white balance in PP later. If you are able to adjust the white balance to suit the setting right then and there, experiment with it.

MLKstudios wrote: Don't shoot fast. A flash needs a chance to recharge. It takes a new technique.

If you have an on camera (attached) flash...

It should have TTL mode, so set it to that (aka E-TTL or i-TTL). Set your ISO to 400, the shutter speed to 1/60 (or less for low light), then use a bounce card (or a white index card with a rubber band) on the flash head, tilt it slightly, using f/8 close in (one person) and f/4 for distance (a group).

For the pop-up, pop it up. Use the same settings above.

That's a start, anyway.


Thanks. I was just thinking, since I will be taking pictures at a dinner, I will be close to people. Wouldn't flash bother them, not just the people I am with, but strangers around me. I don't want people around me thinking who is that crazy person with the camera. lol

LeahJean84 wrote: Your best bet is probably to boost up your ISO and have an open aperture (f3.4) adjust your shutter speed to about 1/60 and you should be okay. If you're shooting in Raw you will be able to adjust the white balance in PP later. If you are able to adjust the white balance to suit the setting right then and there, experiment with it.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

In TTL mode, the larger the ap (and the closer you are to the subject) the less light the flash has to produce. So, close in with a large ap, isn't going to blind the neighbors.

Instead of f/8 for DoF close in, stay on f/4 (or a bit wider as Leah suggested).



FYI Adjust the shutter speed for the ambient. Slower to let more in.

I'm assuming you are using the XSi and 50mm listed in your profile, and are shooting jpeg.

The 50mm lens offers a larger maximum aperture (max aperture is smallest f/# ) than your zoom, so I'd use it.

How are the photos going to be used? Web? Small prints? Large prints? I wouldn't worry about high ISO noise too much. Crank it up to ISO 1600 or 3200. You said this was for practice; that's the perfect time to see where you find high ISO noise to be a problem. Read up on your camera's noise reduction features. It can depend on the situation, but I usually find blur due to subject movement or camera shake more offensive than a bit of noise. Also if the photo is for web or prints 8"x12" and smaller you may hardly notice it even if it looks atrocious when pixel peeping.

Set white balance to tungsten (icon looks like a light bulb). Don't forget to change it back to auto or daylight when you are done. If you shoot outdoors on tungsten wb you will get very blue photos.

So I'd start out in Av at f/2.8 and ISO 1600. See what kid of shutter speed that's giving you. I think the advice above of 1/60th or faster would be good. If it's very high, like 1/250th or more, you can lower your ISO to 800 or 400.

Since it's practice try different things. Learning to read the histogram would help. www.photographytalk.com/forum/tips-and-t...eters-and-histograms

LeahJean84 wrote: Your best bet is probably to boost up your ISO and have an open aperture (f3.4) adjust your shutter speed to about 1/60 and you should be okay. If you're shooting in Raw you will be able to adjust the white balance in PP later. If you are able to adjust the white balance to suit the setting right then and there, experiment with it.

Make sure you can steady your camera and people aren't moving much.
Your 50mm lens wide open is going to let you shoot in lower light than your kit lens.

That a few "practice shots" to test WB. Also shoot in RAW (or RAW+jpeg) so you can get the best adjustments from the RAW file.

Thanks, Henry. I was researching and slow typing. Good advice.

Thanks Everyone. These photos I will be keeping on my computer and sharing via email or even facebook with the people that will be at the dinner. I have no plans on printing them, but maybe the other's will print the pictures.

Wolfman wrote: Thanks Everyone. These photos I will be keeping on my computer and sharing via email or even facebook with the people that will be at the dinner. I have no plans on printing them, but maybe the other's will print the pictures.

Shoot like you are going to print, then you are covered.

Wolf, it would be nice if you tried both methods (flash and no flash) and showed us your results.

And good luck.

Matthew

Wolfman wrote: Thanks Everyone. These photos I will be keeping on my computer and sharing via email or even facebook with the people that will be at the dinner. I have no plans on printing them, but maybe the other's will print the pictures.

While I agree with Baydream that it's best to go for the highest quality if possible if we think there's a chance someone might want a large print, the fact is we usually have a pretty good idea how the photos are going to be used. Casual family and friends snapshots are rarely printed these days, and even if they are it's going to be 8"X12" or smaller. This is part of previsualization. If I know they are never going bigger than 8x12, and probably not bigger than 4x6, then I can get away with a lot more when it comes to issues like high ISO noise than if I were wanting 16"x24" prints.