Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi, need to pick your brains again.

Have an event coming up this Saturday to take photos of someone's B'day party at a club/restaurant.

I don't use flash very much but will obviously need to for this occasion.

I have 2 flashes, an old Vivitar and an SB 600 for Nikon.

Checked out the Gary Fong diffuser but it doesn't fit the Vivitar.

I would prefer to use the Vivitar as it boots up faster than the SB.

Also, I would like to buy the type of arm that holds the flash off to the side of the camera but don't know what the actual name of it is.

Should I get it? Is there another diffuser on the market I could buy for the Vivitar that works the same as the GF?

There's an event photographer who I like, The Cobra Snake, but don't know what his equipment is. Google him and you'll see the type of photos he takes for events and how the flash looks. This is what I'm hoping to achieve at the upcoming b'day event.

Thanks in advance for any input you provide.

As always, you guys are a great group!

Leesa

this the style?

http://www.fashionising.com/pictures/b- ... -3483.html

i would use the Nikon SB600 to take advantage of your Nikon's i-TTL system and bounce off the ceiling if it's white, if not use a diffuser such as a bounce card I use a flip it (http://www.dembflashproducts.com/flipit/models/) or a stofen pointed about 45 degrees away from the subject.

you can use the second vivitar in optical slave mode to light the background. or other uses like a side light.

that's what i would do if I had your equipment.

the arm thing you're refering to is called a stroboframe
http://www.tiffen.com/Header_page_Stroboframe.htm

have fun!

Some club shooters don't even use flash.. If you have a FF camera just boost the ISO to a reasonable sensitivity and incorporate your ambient light. Depends on the type of photos/ style your looking for as said in the above post

Is this the guy you are referring to?: http://www.thecobrasnake.com/partyphotos.html

Looks like direct flash or a 45 degree angle to me.
Maybe a bounce card of some sort!
You can notice that the skin tones are a little washed out and the background is not well preserved.

I'm no genius but I'm pretty sure he's just using TTL everything and probably Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority!

Actually, this is his page:

http://www.thecobrasnake.com/

And thanks for the Stroboframe ident.

I know very little about club shoots but from lurking around the POTN thread I know "fast" and "wide" are very popular terms. And from briefly looking at the Cobra photos it would appear, to my amateur eye, (s)he's doing that fast wide thing with a mounted flash in the lower light situations.

What kind of lenses do you have at your disposal?

The majority of my photography has been bands at night clubs & bars so lots and lots of low light situations. For most of my shots they're all done with my 50mm 1.8f, or more recently my 10.5mm 2.8f fisheye.

I always shoot aperture priority and keep the f stop as low as it will go (1.8 or 2. This makes only what you're focusing on... focused while everything else will tend to blur out pretty quickly. Which I think is depth of field(?)

I don't have a flash so I'm no help to you there. Except...
One of my friends has the SB600, and he just uses a 4 x 6 piece of blank(white) photographic paper held on with an elastic band as his bounce card, says it works better than any diffuser he's ever tried (or owned)

bounce card != diffuser
one is meant to direct the light forward and the other to soften by diffusing.

I've had good results when using a bounce card (which takes away that bit of harshness that one often gets with flash). I also use a flash bracket when I shoot events, and it is a great tool to help you get the flash up off your camera so the shadows aren't so sharp and obvious. Just make sure that with whatever flash bracket you use, you are able to rotate the camera to vertical/horizontal without too much trouble.

Good luck!

Hmmm, bounce card. Didn't think about that. I'll try a DIY one first to compare.

As for lenses, the widest I can go is 2.8 on a 30-70mm. I was hoping to use my 70-300mm to get close ups without being too close but the widest on that lens is 4.

I don't like boosting my ISO higher than 400 because the noise becomes very apparent. Especially in low light situations. I'm using a Nikon D70. Can't afford to upgrade just yet.

And the flash bracket makes sense too. I'll be taking a trip to Henry's this week and will add this to my inventory.

Thank you everyone for your input. I think I know what to try.

Wish me luck!!

Stick with the short lens. Even if you use a flash you will have camera-shake artifacts due to the slow shutter speed necessary to capture the ambient. Unless your shooting at iso 6400+ you will have camera shake with a 300mm f4.

ISO 400 will be a steady hand challenge indeed. No coffee for you

slow your shutter to 1/3 or so, to capture the ambient, and use a hotshoe flash. if you shoot with too wide of a lens, then you may run into the issue that the place does not look busy (ie. fun), so sometimes you may not want to use a wide angle. in terms of the hotshoe flash, if you point it at the ceiling (if it's a club) then you will have no luck whatsoever with getting any bounced light at the subject. i just use a 8.5"x11" piece of paper folded twice and wrapped like a bounce card using a rubber band. then the flash is pointed downwards by one or two clicks from horizontal (so as not to have the flash pointing directly up, nor to have it pointing directly at the subject). and don't bother getting the bracket that holds the flash on the side, even when you shoot vertically, the light should hit the subject fine (just play ignorant to the person standing next to you who get's flash in eyes though haha).

ps: don't bother with 'fast' lenses. sure, they can bring your iso down a little, resulting in less grainy photos, but as long as you have flash that doesn't matter. and unless your shooting with a d3 and trying to capture only ambient, don't bother not bringing a flash haha.

as for cobrasnake - once you have the photos properly exposed and such, the editing can make any photo look like anyone elses - the rest is just in post-processing.

hope this helped. here are some examples of my photos for reference (and more can be seen on my site):

You can also try Stroboscopic flash if the SB-600 supports it.
This way, you can use slow shutter speeds but still freeze the main subject while the background is blurred with motion!

Wow, lots of great advice. I love you guys/gals!!!!

Took the trip to Henry's and of course, they wanted me to buy the Gary Fong gizmo. But I decided upon the Lumiquest Promax System.

Gary Fong's diffusers won't fit my Vivitar and I wanted something I could use for both flashes.

I'm going to do some tests at home with this using my cats as my "moving" subjects. However, I won't have all the colours this club/bar/restaurant will have.

Once again, I really do appreciate all your advice.

Thank you.

OK, the party has come and gone.

I've assembled a group of photos with my settings imbedded to help me learn about what worked and what didn't.

I was not able to catch any of the ambient lighting. The flash totally washed out any surrounding light.

The flash I used was a Vivitar 285HV on a Nikon D70 with an 18-70mm lens.

All but the flash was digital. I was on Manual mode with the camera and had to keep adjusting all the settings depending on how far away people were compared to zooming in and out.

What could I have done to incorporate the ambient lighting?

Also, had to turn off the Auto Focus several times because the flash just couldn't focus in such dim lighting conditions. The Auto Illuminator only works if my focus point is set to the center of the lens. A bit frustrating I will say!!!!

Any advice you could offer would, as always, be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

slow down the shutter to half a second or so (or slower if there is not much ambient at all) and have a really steady hand. couple it with flash and you get a nice mix of lighting.



correct - the AF illuminator of the flash (red grid) will only work if the focus point is in the center. what i typically do is just put the focus on the centerpoint, lock it, and then just focus recompose when i shoot, depending on where the subject is standing in the frame.

hope this answers your questions!

slow down the shutter to half a second or so (or slower if there is not much ambient at all) and have a really steady hand. couple it with flash and you get a nice mix of lighting.

Thanks Match Stick, but how would people stay in focus? I thought the rule of thumb was no speed slower than 1/60 for hand holding? Some shots were taken at 1/40. Also, lots of people moving around me, bumping into me. The space was quite cramped so trying to be really steady was challenging too.

I'll try your suggestion at the next opportunity I have. Maybe head out on the street when it's dark.

Thanks for your input.
Cheers

You could always use a slow rear curtain sync. That way the ambient soaks into the photo and the flash fires as the rear curtain is closing. This allows you to use a slower shutter speed and pick up ambient while still freezing your subject.

IMO your flash is lighting the place up way to much. You might want to throw a modifier of sorts on it so you're not spilling light everywhere. Was this a bare flash?

I couldn't use the slow rear curtain as the Vivitar is not a digital flash. I think I can with an SB600.

Also, I had a Lumiquest Bounce Diffuser on the flash with the unit pointed to the ceiling.

Vince had the right idea wrt rear curtain sync imho.

I believe lowering the shutter speed - to a reasonable 1/20 is perfect - the flash head and where you point it will be dependent on what you have to bounce it off of.

Pointing the flash at a 90 degree angle to the body isn't good.
If you've got a "light" (i.e. non-black but not white) ceiling, then probably about 120 degrees is about right - where the flash is actually aimed up and AWAY from you. Use the same method whether you shoot landscape or portrait.

I don't have any photos online (or here) to show you what I'm talking about but I've been in some cavernous places (Liberty Grand for example) and you can still get usable decent images without too much trouble; just takes some time to get your thinking right before hand. Don't be afraid of "motion blur" (different than "out of focus") even at 1/20..

Cheers,
Dave

although you can use rear-curtain flash, i never have in any of my shots. and to address your concern with the blurryness at these slow shutter speeds, the slow shutter is strictly to capture the ambient light, the flash will ultimately freeze the subject anyways.

all the best,
matt k. h.

ps: most of my shots are at 1/4 to 1/2 second, otherwise i don't get the ambient!

pps: dcsang is right - careful about the difference between motion blur and out of focus. motion blur is good for this sort of photography.

I'd highly recommend getting a digital flash that supports TTL metering. Given that your subjects are all different distances with different backgrounds and lighting, a flash that supports TTL will automatically adjust power etc... to give you the balance you need while still giving you the creative control that you want. I'm not saying that you can't do this without a digital flash, but it will give you one thing less to worry about and will typically lead you to more good shots.

Sorry guys but what exactly is a digital flash? Never heard that one before. Match Stick has the right idea .. the flash duration is so brief that it will capture the subject properly independent of the camera shutter speed. Where the camera shutter speed comes into play is when trying to capture ambient light in addition to the flash output. Depending on the ambient lighting intensity slowing the camera shutter speed to 1/2 sec or so should do.

Maybe digital flash is the new term for TTL flash?

was trying to distinguish generically between the 'manual only' flash that she defined in the first post as "analog flash" and one that is "TTL" enabled without getting into whether it is i-TTL, D-TTL, TTL, E-TTL, E-TTL II, etc... "Digital flash" seemed to be a good term to complement what she referred to as "analog"

With film cameras, you can have TTL flash metering off the film plane itself. No pre-flash required. With digital sensors, you need the pre-flash for TTL to work.

Looking at the pics above, the shutter speed is definitely way too high, something around 1/25 to 1/50 would be much better. More flash bounce off the ceiling would help with a less flash-like look.

Also, you may want to open up your aperture as I noticed for several shots you were at 3.5, 4, 4.5 and even 10 according to what you noted.

As mentioned, dragging the shutter allows you to capture more ambient. By either adjusting the power or the modifier, your flash should act as a fill.

My 2 cents.

The 18-70mm DX lens have variable aperture throughout the focal length. At 18mm it's max aperture is f/3.5 and at the long end it's f/4.5.

do I need license to use DSLR in the club?

someone told me that you have to pay the club money to use DSLR in the club.

Is this true?