Indoor Beauty Pageant advice please...

SimpsonBrothers

My wife just voulentold me for a beauty pageant that will be indoors at a high school gym.
I do not have the lighting conditions, but flash not allowed.

Equipment:
EOS 40D
EOS Rebel (300d)
50mm 1.8 fixed
Many zoom lenses, 3.5 is lowest

What ISO is safe to use without a lot of grain?
Should I use a tripod?

craig_d

Assume the worst if you don't have access to the facility in advance. Take some pictures at home, under mediocre lighting, at full-stop ISOs from 400 to 1600 with both cameras and see what you think of the noise levels. Personally I doubt I would want to go beyond 800 on those cameras, but you should judge it for yourself. If 1600 is what it takes to get the shots, then you live with the noise. When you get to the event, take a few test shots before things get started to work out what ISO level and exposure times you need.

Unless the lighting at this place is unusually good for a high school gym, I doubt any of your f/3.5+ zoom lenses will be useful (though bright spotlights can be quite helpful if they're likely to be in use). 50mm f/1.8 will work, though it depends where you'll be situated (how far from your subjects). If it were me, I'd want to bring my 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.4, and I might buy an 85mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2, or (at much greater expense) 135mm f/2L to be safe.

colourbox

craig_d wrote:

Take some pictures at home, under mediocre lighting, at full-stop ISOs from 400 to 1600 with both cameras and see what you think of the noise levels. Personally I doubt I would want to go beyond 800 on those cameras, but you should judge it for yourself. If 1600 is what it takes to get the shots, then you live with the noise.

In addition to that good advice, another answer is, any ISO where you aren't underexposing. Because underexposed shots at a low ISO can look noisier than a shot at a high ISO that is properly exposed or brighter.

And think about running a noise reduction program on them afterwards if you have to. Used properly it might make 1600 look like 800.

ziggy53

If it's an important event, find a way to visit the facility before the event. At very least show up early so you can run some tests. You will see what you're up against.

Lens choice may partly depend on where you are positioned, but your zooms are probably still going to cause issues if there is not much light because focusing is going to be tough. If possible rent or borrow a 70-200mm, f2.8 something or the Canon EF 135mm, f2L USM that Craig suggested. In a gym I would bet that you'll have some room to shoot and the 2 lenses above will give you some intimacy with the subjects if needed.

SimpsonBrothers

Ok so how about these camera settings to start off:

40D
AV
Spot Meter
Auto ISO
High ISO Noise Reduction on
Neutral Shooting Mode

I'm going to surf craigslist and see what I can find as far as faster lenses.

Scott_Quier

SimpsonBrothers wrote:

My wife just voulentold me for a beauty pageant that will be indoors at a high school gym.
I do not have the lighting conditions, but flash not allowed.

Equipment:
EOS 40D
EOS Rebel (300d)
50mm 1.8 fixed
Many zoom lenses, 3.5 is lowest

What ISO is safe to use without a lot of grain?
Should I use a tripod?

I love that, "voluntold" - I'm going to have to remember that.

First .. a question - What relation does you DW have with the pageant? If she's one of the organizers or is in someway a person of authority, there might be room to negotiate that "No Flash" rule as such rules usually apply to the masses and not the "offical photographer."

As has already been mentioned, with your cameras, ISO 800 is about has high as you want to go. And, at that, you will have to nail the exposure - you will have no lattitude for pushing the exposure in post, even if you are shooting RAW (and you need to be shooting RAW!).

You should consider renting a couple of fast zooms/primes. How about the EF 50 f/1.2L and the EF 85 f/1.2L II (reasonable rates here - especially if you mention DGrin as that's good for a discount on their rates) and then shoot with them stopped down about 1/2 stop (and even then, your DOF will be quite thin). Mount one lens on each of your cameras and have a good time. Oh, be warned, this is likely to totally ruin you for other glass - it's a condition commonly referred to as Lcholism :lol

I can't talk to your question about a tripod as I've never shot an event like this (but, I've shot lots of stuff in gyms and other dark venues so I know a bit about that).

SimpsonBrothers

Scott_Quier wrote:

You should consider renting a couple of fast zooms/primes. How about the EF 50 f/1.2L and the EF 85 f/1.2L II (reasonable rates here - especially if you mention DGrin as that's good for a discount on their rates) and then shoot with them stopped down about 1/2 stop (and even then, your DOF will be quite thin). Mount one lens on each of your cameras and have a good time. Oh, be warned, this is likely to totally ruin you for other glass - it's a condition commonly referred to as Lcholism :lol

Thanks! That place is right down the road from me, and pretty good prices too!

Scott_Quier

SimpsonBrothers wrote:

Thanks! That place is right down the road from me, and pretty good prices too!

Lucky you!!! I would love to live "right down the road" from someplace like that .... though I don't think my bank account would suffer very well

SimpsonBrothers

Ok, I just found out that I will be able to use my onboard flash and will be 10-20 feet from the targets.

So now I'm thinking of shooting ISO Auto, TV 1/80, EV+1, spot metering with the 50mm 1.8

Sound good?

ziggy53

Do you mean that you have an external flash or are you planning to use the camera's built-in flash?

Scott_Quier

SimpsonBrothers wrote:

Ok, I just found out that I will be able to use my onboard flash and will be 10-20 feet from the targets.

So now I'm thinking of shooting ISO Auto, TV 1/80, EV+1, spot metering with the 50mm 1.8

Sound good?

Sounds wrong on sooooo many levels ....

Whenever possible (and when it's smart to do so) you want to avoid the automatic settings on your camera. Repeat after me, "The computer in my camera is STUPID". Shooting Tv, your camera will attempt to set the shutter speed to get a good exposure at whatever aperture you select. This will be much too slow.

The "formula" for shooting Canon with flash indoors is to shoot in manual mode. Set you ISO to either 400 or 800 (don't use fractional ISO values, that just causes more problems), your shutter speed to at least 1/60 and your aperture to something reasonable - something in the range of f/2.8 to f/4. Your flash will carry the load from there ... you may have to dial in a bit of Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC, read your owner's manual for more) depending on the color of the subject's clothing. If the clothing is lighter, you will need to dial in more FEC. Darker clothes, not so much.

If your subjects were all going to be, more or less, the same distance from the camera then shooting with manual flash would eliminate a lot of problems. But, you've already indicated that the distance will be between 10 and 20 feet - light fall-off across that distance is going to be 1 stop - more that you want to adjust in post (especially at the suggested ISO values).

As Ziggy has already asked, does "onboard flash" mean that little pop-up thing or are you going to use something like the Canon 580EX? If it's the popup, you probably won't get the results you are looking for. The power of the on-board flash is too little for the job and the recycle time is going to kill both you and your camera batteries.

To avoid "side shadows", try to shoot with the flash always above your lens - this will mean that you will want to use some sort of decent flash bracket if you are going to rotate your camera in "portrait" orientation.

Here's a tip you may not yet have been exposed to: When shooting with flash, if your flash is illuminating your subject but the background falls to black - this means the ambient light of your scene is not being captured. To correct, either increase your ISO or decrease your shutter speed (from, for example 1/125 to 1/60), or both. Each of these adjustments allow ambient light to make a greater contribution to the exposure - the backgrounds, because they are primarily lit by ambient will be brighter.

adbsgicom

What Scott said.

One question for Scott, though, what problems do ISO's off the 100/200/400/800 numbers present?

Scott_Quier

adbsgicom wrote:

What Scott said.

One question for Scott, though, what problems do ISO's off the 100/200/400/800 numbers present?

Rather than repeat what he's already written, read what Ziggy has to say about in in this thread

adbsgicom

Scott_Quier wrote:

Rather than repeat what he's already written, read what Ziggy has to say about in in this thread

Interesting read. Thanks.