First Paid job- Need advice please

KMW · July 16, 2007

Hi,
I was just hired for a 6 year olds birthday party at a YMCA Saturday and would love if anyone could offer me some advice. So far I have been advertising outdoor location photography specialing in babies and children. The mother is aware this will be my first time photographing a birthday party indoors. I am not asking for any money up front and she only pays for any prints she wants to purchase. I own a Nikon D80 and have recently been shooting RAW and playing around with Manual mode. I do not know what the lighting is like in a YMCA and I do not own a external flash yet. Does anyone know what ISO I should use in a situation like this? I do not want any digital noise. Should I shoot in Manual mode or stick with Aperture, Shutter, or program mode. They will have a room for one hour for the cake and then an indoor pool. I am very excited about this but also a little nervous. I didn't want to turn this down because it will allow me to gain some experience and I wanted to eventually do birthday parties as well. I just didn't know that would be my first call. I was completely upfront with her and told her this was a new business and she still wanted to hire me. Any advice I would really appreciate.

Thanks,
Kath

Art Scott · July 16, 2007

No Matter The Mode Shoot Raw

KMW wrote:

Hi,
I was just hired for a 6 year olds birthday party at a YMCA Saturday and would love if anyone could offer me some advice. So far I have been advertising outdoor location photography specialing in babies and children. The mother is aware this will be my first time photographing a birthday party indoors. I am not asking for any money up front and she only pays for any prints she wants to purchase. I own a Nikon D80 and have recently been shooting RAW and playing around with Manual mode. I do not know what the lighting is like in a YMCA and I do not own a external flash yet. Does anyone know what ISO I should use in a situation like this? I do not want any digital noise. Should I shoot in Manual mode or stick with Aperture, Shutter, or program mode. They will have a room for one hour for the cake and then an indoor pool. I am very excited about this but also a little nervous. I didn't want to turn this down because it will allow me to gain some experience and I wanted to eventually do birthday parties as well. I just didn't know that would be my first call. I was completely upfront with her and told her this was a new business and she still wanted to hire me. Any advice I would really appreciate.

Thanks,
Kath

Is Hanover large enuff to be able to rent a flash unit for the day? If so then I would suggest renting a good one (not an bottom line cheapy), as most YMCA's have either Fluorescent (greenish yellow) or sodium vapor (bluish) lighting...........

Can you get to the YMCA prior to the event to get a feel for lighting and such.......I am an aperture Priority nut....most of my film cameras were AP (if I had to get a camera that shot just one mode) so that is what I mostly shoot in........I would prob. either shooting the AP or (and I hate to think this way but at times it does work well) Program mode.....About no matter which mode you are in SHOOT RAW.....

To keep noise down will mean as low an Iso as possible .......I do my best to not shoot above 100 but have been driven to shoot as high as 3200 ISO......you may want to also look at some noise reducing software just in case (noiseware, neat image or noise ninja)......

GOOD LUCK...........and we would like to see some of the party pics please.

anwmn1 · July 16, 2007

I would agree with Art- see if you can get your hands on a flash and shoot with what you are comfortable shooting. If you are not feeling good about Manual than shoot Apeture priority or even auto if you cannot adjust White Balance in Apeture.

You were smart to be up front with the mom and you are doing her a favor. She will be happy to get 3 or 5 decent shots so don't stress yourself out to much.

Post your shots so we can see how you did and offer some help for next time.

KMW · July 16, 2007

Hi,
Thanks for your replies. I think I will have to work with what I have..I don't know of any rental places nearby and I'm not sure if I could learn to use an external flash in such a short amount of time. I have been reading and practicing both indoor and outdoor photography for a couple years now but the last year or so focusing on outdoor photography. I did photograph my cousin's 6 year old's birthday party for free last year and did not use an external flash. I shot in Aperture mode and she was thrilled with the pictures. That party was indoors at night so I'm thinking I will probably stick with Aperture and shoot RAW to set the white balance later. I did end up with about 30 or 40 pictures she was really happy with so I'm hoping that will be the case with this party. At least she knows I am new to the business and is not obligated to purchase any pictures she does not like. I usually shoot aperture but have used program mode. I like to avoid it as much as possible too. I have only been learning manual for a couple of weeks now. I also check the histrogram after I take a photo. If I use aperture mode and increase the ISO, would an ISO 400 work well indoors without causing a lot of digital noise? or Should I keep it around 200? The party will be from noon to 3pm. I'm thinking she will probably only purchase 4x6s.

Art Scott · July 16, 2007

KMW wrote:

Hi,
Thanks for your replies. I think I will have to work with what I have..I don't know of any rental places nearby and I'm not sure if I could learn to use an external flash in such a short amount of time. I have been reading and practicing both indoor and outdoor photography for a couple years now but the last year or so focusing on outdoor photography. I did photograph my cousin's 6 year old's birthday party for free last year and did not use an external flash. I shot in Aperture mode and she was thrilled with the pictures. That party was indoors at night so I'm thinking I will probably stick with Aperture and shoot RAW to set the white balance later. I did end up with about 30 or 40 pictures she was really happy with so I'm hoping that will be the case with this party. At least she knows I am new to the business and is not obligated to purchase any pictures she does not like. I usually shoot aperture but have used program mode. I like to avoid it as much as possible too. I have only been learning manual for a couple of weeks now. I also check the histrogram after I take a photo. If I use aperture mode and increase the ISO, would an ISO 400 work well indoors without causing a lot of digital noise? or Should I keep it around 200? The party will be from noon to 3pm. I'm thinking she will probably only purchase 4x6s.

Since I come from the film age (showing my age here) of 35mm and med. format shooting....I find that hearing fotogs say they are always checking histogram to means means missed shots in situations like parties and weddings and such....I still rely on my hand-held meters to give me incident readings......even chimping shots can cause you to loose valuable spontaneous kid shots (think of this as a sporting event) and don't be afraid to pose some of the shots.....as I said earlier try to go to the "Y" for a Test Drive I am pretty sure they will let you in...that way you can check lighting and do a few test shots at various ISO and I would try to not go above 400 if possible..........What lens will you be using? I would opt for a semi wide to med tele (24-70 or close)........

Also I see a bit of degrading your self here by saying you think she will only purchase 4 x 6's.......ALWAYS HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND BE THINKING SHE WILL PURCHASE NOTHING SMALLER THAN 8 X 10'S

pathfinder · July 16, 2007

KMW wrote:

Hi,
I was just hired for a 6 year olds birthday party at a YMCA Saturday and would love if anyone could offer me some advice. So far I have been advertising outdoor location photography specialing in babies and children. The mother is aware this will be my first time photographing a birthday party indoors.

I looked at your gallery and you have some lovely shots, nice crisp close ups of kids.. I did not check the exif data, but I'll bet it is a LOT darker inside the Y, than the outside locations you are used to shooting in. The light in Y's is usually overhead flourescent, or overhead sodium lights. You do not want to try to shoot available light in either of these lights.

I agree with Art, get a good flash and know how to use it cold - even better if you can use it off camera - bounce it off a white wall to create a big large window light effect. Flash is fast and will help stop movement of active kids.

The ceilings in a Y may be way too high to use bounce flash - But if you have a white wall you could bounce off it - or you could hang a white sheet to bounce off. Go to the Y ahead of time and shoot a few different frames to get a feel for what you will have to deal with.

KMW · July 17, 2007

I went ahead and purchased a SB600...You guys made me think twice and I would like to do a good job with this. I've wanted to buy this for a year now. Now I don't have to limit myself to outdoor photography. They told me at the store I could just plug it in and it should work automatically. I won't be able to try it until later tonight. He also suggested slipping a white business card into the flash and tilting it up slightly. I will be using an 18-135 lens. Do you think I should use shutter priority with active kids?

Pathfinder-Thank you for your advice and compliment....

Art- I did not mean to degrade myself...I know if I think positive good things will happen. I try

Art Scott · July 17, 2007

KMW wrote:

I went ahead and purchased a SB600...You guys made me think twice and I would like to do a good job with this. I've wanted to buy this for a year now. Now I don't have to limit myself to outdoor photography. They told me at the store I could just plug it in and it should work automatically. I won't be able to try it until later tonight. He also suggested slipping a white business card into the flash and tilting it up slightly. I will be using an 18-135 lens. Do you think I should use shutter priority with active kids?

Pathfinder-Thank you for your advice and compliment....

Art- I did not mean to degrade myself...I know if I think positive good things will happen. I try

If you were shooting something truly fast then i would say go shutter but since you got a good falsh then stay with aperature and use it creatively...if you want to darken the background then use a smaller aperture (larger f number) and so on...but do a little experimentation even if it is just a home

Glad you decided to get the flash and yes a business card bouncer can help with getting more flattering photos...........

pathfinder · July 17, 2007

Art's suggestion of using a 3 x 5 cards as a reflector on the top of a flash ( the flash angled at 45 degrees to bounce off a ceiling) to throw light into the eyes of the subject is good advice.

Even better, perhaps, is a foamie diffuser as discussed in this thread - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47275

Basically, you cut out a 4 x7 inch piece of foamie - which is a white foam sheet about 1/8th in thick - and rubber band that to the back of your speedlite to throw some of the light forward. You can fold it backwards over the flash tube when you are done, so you do not need to ever remove it. I keep one on my 580ex at all times.

I reported on shooting candids with off camera flash with a foamie diffuser here I am not aware of a Nikon product to match the ST-E2, but a PC cord could trigger the flash in manual mode....

KMW · July 17, 2007

Thanks for your advice...There is a diffuser built right into it...is it better to create your own like both of you suggested?

pathfinder · July 17, 2007

I think the foamies throw a little more light - they are a bigger, more diffuse light source. Bigger, more diffuse is generally a good thing.

In the Christmas candids post I talked about setting the flash in a corner on a table, with the light shooting up to bounce off the ceiling and the difuser to throw some light forward. Depends on how high the ceiling is though. A gym ceiling will be too high.

Scott_Quier · July 18, 2007

Some things to think about:

The light in the Y will be as described above. Your flash is designed to produce day-light balanced light. If you shoot with a a slow enough shutter that you get some ambient light in the shot, your walls will have a really ugly cast to them.
Visit the location to determine the color of the light ahead of time.
You can use a gel to color the light from your flash to match that of the ambient. Then, in post, you can correct the white balance. Understand that when you do this, you could loose anywhere from 1/3 to 1 full stop of light from the flash. The flash will compensate, but you do loose that power.
Shoot RAW. This will allow you to recover from exposure mistakes much more easily than will shooting JPG. Anything up to +/- 1 stop is easy to recover with RAW. It's much more difficult with JPG.
Once you get on location, be sure to grab a shot of a gray card (or some other trueyly neutral colored object) to use that as a basis for setting your color temperature in post. You also might want to think about getting another shot of this just as you are wrapping up as the ligiht may change over time. This will help eliminate the need to guess.
If the lighting is flourescent and you set your shutter low enough that ambient light will be a component of your exposure (I strongly suggest that this be the case otherwise you will have the people properly exposed, but sitting in a black, under-exposed background), be sure that your shutter speed is a mutliple of 1/60 (i.e., 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, etc). Don't shoot higher than 1/60. U.S. power runs at a, nominal, frequency of 1/60s (60 Hz). The color of flourescent light changes, depending on which part of the sine wave you capture. So, to get consistant light color, you need to be sure to get an entire cycle of that light pulse. This is only possible if you shoot with shutter speeds as indicated above. Of course, this is in direct conflict with trying to stop the action of your subject. But flash will stop action!
Set your flash to second curtain sync. This will ensure that any blurring/ghosting of your subjects will be in the right direction - behind your stopped action rather than ahead of it.
The foam bounce card (also called "The Better Bounce Card") is a great idea. The white craft foam is usually very white. Index cards can have a blueish color cast to them, which will change the color/temperature of the light from your flash.
I would very much suggest you shoot in manual mode. The light in a room will not change much in the course of a couple of hours. Take a test shot, check the histogram, and alter your settings. Repeat until you get the exposure you want. When you let the camera decide on exposure, you loose a lot of control over what is happening and the camera can be easily fooled by sudden backlighting, etc. You have a brain - use it.
Don't trust your LCD image as a guage of exposure. The image in the LCD can be bright or dark, depending on where you have set the brightness level. Use it only for checking composition. Your histogram rules.

pathfinder · July 18, 2007

Wow,

Excellent suggestions, Scott, and the suggestion about 1/60th or slower to capture a full cycle with fluorescent light is really helpful - I have not seen that mentioned before, but it makes a great deal of sense, and may explain some funky yellow colors I got shooting in the basement of a church lit by fluorescents - I did use flash, but the images had a funky light yellow tinge and my shutter speeds were faster than 1/60th I am sure.

If there is a white wall I would bounce flash off the wall - I would even consider bouncing off a white sheet on a wall if necessary - It will give the effect of a nice large north window.

Scott_Quier · July 18, 2007

pathfinder wrote:

Wow,

Excellent suggestions, Scott, and the suggestion about 1/60th or slower to capture a full cycle with fluorescent light is really helpful - I have not seen that mentioned before, but it makes a great deal of sense, and may explain some funky yellow colors I got shooting in the basement of a church lit by fluorescents - I did use flash, but the images had a funky light yellow tinge and my shutter speeds were faster than 1/60th I am sure.

If there is a white wall I would bounce flash off the wall - I would even consider bouncing off a white sheet on a wall if necessary - It will give the effect of a nice large north window.

It's not just that the shutter speed needs to be slower than 1/60, it needs to be a multiple of that. This is why I specified the shutter speeds I did. You need to get a full power cycle of exposure on the sensor. It doesn't matter that you are synchronized with any particular point in the cycle, just that you get one or more full power cycles on the sensor.

As for the WOW factor - well, I've learned so much here that I try to give back. I try to give a complete picture. This cuts down the learning curve for those who read. I have gleaned the above from reading, probably, thousands of posts and articles over the course of the last year and a significant amount of trial and error. There's no need to force someone else through all that if I can spend 10 or 20 minutes typing it all up.

mercphoto · July 18, 2007

Scott_Quier wrote:

If the lighting is flourescent and you set your shutter low enough that ambient light will be a component of your exposure (I strongly suggest that this be the case otherwise you will have the people properly exposed, but sitting in a black, under-exposed background), be sure that your shutter speed is a mutliple of 1/60 (i.e., 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, etc). Don't shoot higher than 1/60. U.S. power runs at a, nominal, frequency of 1/60s (60 Hz). The color of flourescent light changes, depending on which part of the sine wave you capture. So, to get consistant light color, you need to be sure to get an entire cycle of that light pulse.

Actually, 1/125 also works. This gives you a full half-wave, which is identical in all respects to the other half. Notice that 1/90 would not work, nor would any speed faster than 1/125.

Also I wanted to mention that when you said that you did not want any digital noise that this is, technically, impossible to achieve. You will always have noise.

My advice is to go to M mode, set the shutter to either 1/60 or to 1/125. The faster speed is slightly perferred given the fact that kids move. Select an ISO that you are comfortable with the noise levels your camera provides. Then select an aperture that meters out to about 1-2 stops under-exposed but be careful your depth of field does not get too shallow. Your flash unit should be able to give you some extra boost in the light and RAW processing will help a bit further. Notice this is a compromise and your backgrounds will be underexposed a bit.

mercphoto · July 18, 2007

mercphoto wrote:

Actually, 1/125 also works. This gives you a full half-wave, which is identical in all respects to the other half. Notice that 1/90 would not work, nor would any speed faster than 1/125.

Hmmmm.... wait a minute. Can anyone verify if a flourescent is shining on both halves the sine wave, or only on one half of the sine wave? In other words, does the tube act like a diode or not?

mercphoto · July 18, 2007

mercphoto wrote:

Hmmmm.... wait a minute. Can anyone verify if a flourescent is shining on both halves the sine wave, or only on one half of the sine wave? In other words, does the tube act like a diode or not?

Flourescents flicker at twice the power line frequency, which in the US is 1/60, so they flicker at 1/120. So a shutter speed of 1/125 should indeed work. As will 1/60, 1/30, and 1/15.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Flicker

Scott_Quier · July 18, 2007

mercphoto wrote:

Actually, 1/125 also works. This gives you a full half-wave, which is identical in all respects to the other half. Notice that 1/90 would not work, nor would any speed faster than 1/125.

You are absolutely correct. I had forgotten about that. That's good to know for when I need it! Thanks.

pathfinder · July 18, 2007

The flickering of fluorescent lights I knew, but the significance of shutter speed for color balance with fluorescents I did not know. Very interesting.

I agree with shooting in Manual Mode - using aperture for flash exposure, and shutter speed for ambient light balance it it will fit in the 1/30th, 1/60th, 1/125th ratios suggested.

KMW · July 18, 2007

Scott_Quier wrote:

Some things to think about:
The light in the Y will be as described above. Your flash is designed to produce day-light balanced light. If you shoot with a a slow enough shutter that you get some ambient light in the shot, your walls will have a really ugly cast to them.

Visit the location to determine the color of the light ahead of time.

You can use a gel to color the light from your flash to match that of the ambient. Then, in post, you can correct the white balance. Understand that when you do this, you could loose anywhere from 1/3 to 1 full stop of light from the flash. The flash will compensate, but you do loose that power.

Shoot RAW. This will allow you to recover from exposure mistakes much more easily than will shooting JPG. Anything up to +/- 1 stop is easy to recover with RAW. It's much more difficult with JPG.

Once you get on location, be sure to grab a shot of a gray card (or some other trueyly neutral colored object) to use that as a basis for setting your color temperature in post. You also might want to think about getting another shot of this just as you are wrapping up as the ligiht may change over time. This will help eliminate the need to guess.

If the lighting is flourescent and you set your shutter low enough that ambient light will be a component of your exposure (I strongly suggest that this be the case otherwise you will have the people properly exposed, but sitting in a black, under-exposed background), be sure that your shutter speed is a mutliple of 1/60 (i.e., 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, etc). Don't shoot higher than 1/60. U.S. power runs at a, nominal, frequency of 1/60s (60 Hz). The color of flourescent light changes, depending on which part of the sine wave you capture. So, to get consistant light color, you need to be sure to get an entire cycle of that light pulse. This is only possible if you shoot with shutter speeds as indicated above. Of course, this is in direct conflict with trying to stop the action of your subject. But flash will stop action!

Set your flash to second curtain sync. This will ensure that any blurring/ghosting of your subjects will be in the right direction - behind your stopped action rather than ahead of it.

The foam bounce card (also called "The Better Bounce Card") is a great idea. The white craft foam is usually very white. Index cards can have a blueish color cast to them, which will change the color/temperature of the light from your flash.

I would very much suggest you shoot in manual mode. The light in a room will not change much in the course of a couple of hours. Take a test shot, check the histogram, and alter your settings. Repeat until you get the exposure you want. When you let the camera decide on exposure, you loose a lot of control over what is happening and the camera can be easily fooled by sudden backlighting, etc. You have a brain - use it.

Don't trust your LCD image as a guage of exposure. The image in the LCD can be bright or dark, depending on where you have set the brightness level. Use it only for checking composition. Your histogram rules.

Thank you Scott for writing such a detailed post. It's a lot of information to take in but it's all starting to make sense to me. Please let me know if I am understanding this correctly. When reading the histogram.. I know if the pixels are too far to the right the photo is overexposed and too far to the left underexposed. If the histogram looks like a hill and nothing is touching the top..is that a perfectly exposed photo? What if there is a spike that touches the top and it looks like a mountain? I want to trust the histogram I just want to make sure I am reading it correctly.

KMW · July 18, 2007

mercphoto wrote:

Actually, 1/125 also works. This gives you a full half-wave, which is identical in all respects to the other half. Notice that 1/90 would not work, nor would any speed faster than 1/125.

Also I wanted to mention that when you said that you did not want any digital noise that this is, technically, impossible to achieve. You will always have noise.

My advice is to go to M mode, set the shutter to either 1/60 or to 1/125. The faster speed is slightly perferred given the fact that kids move. Select an ISO that you are comfortable with the noise levels your camera provides. Then select an aperture that meters out to about 1-2 stops under-exposed but be careful your depth of field does not get too shallow. Your flash unit should be able to give you some extra boost in the light and RAW processing will help a bit further. Notice this is a compromise and your backgrounds will be underexposed a bit.

Thank you for your advice...If I shoot in Manual mode at 1/60 the widest aperture I get is f5.6 and it is still underexposed. I increased the ISO to 400 but that does not seem to help. I tried setting the exposure compensation to 0.7 and that does seem to help. What am I doing wrong? I took a couple test shots of my children earlier and the same thing happened. I do not have any manual test shots to show at the moment but here is a link to some photos I did in Aperture mode. Not the best photos...please ignore their messy faces but could you please tell me if these are properly exposed?
There is an ugly flourescent light in my kitchen above the cabinets behind my son and to the left of my daughter. The kitchen is usually pretty dark. Why can't I get the aperture to open to 3.5? Would I need a higher ISO? I think I start to see noise at ISO400. By the way I don't mind if the background is underexposed at the Y because it's probably not the most attractive background anyway.

If I shoot in Manual and set the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/125 which aperture and ISO should I be using? I'm hoping the Y will be a little brighter than my kitchen.

pathfinder · July 18, 2007

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

Scott_Quier · July 19, 2007

KMW wrote:

Thank you Scott for writing such a detailed post. It's a lot of information to take in but it's all starting to make sense to me. Please let me know if I am understanding this correctly. When reading the histogram.. I know if the pixels are too far to the right the photo is overexposed and too far to the left underexposed. If the histogram looks like a hill and nothing is touching the top..is that a perfectly exposed photo? What if there is a spike that touches the top and it looks like a mountain? I want to trust the histogram I just want to make sure I am reading it correctly.

Touching the top is not an issue. What you want to avoid is the histogram being cut off at the right. The hill you are describing would be a good exposure if you were photographing a lot of vegetation.

For what you are doing, you would like to see the histogram as far to the right as you can get it without

blowing any high-lights
burning out your flash, or
jacking up your ISO, slowing your shutter to the point that the photographs are rendered unsatisfactory.

Then in PP, you would bring the exposure back down to something more reasonable looking.

Some of the best tutorial information on the histogram can be found on Michael Reichmann's site. Specifically, check out these two pages (here and here).

Edit: I didn't notice that Pathfinder had already posted the first of these two links. Either great minds think alike or PF should be very, very afraid!

Scott_Quier · July 19, 2007

KMW wrote:

Thank you for your advice...If I shoot in Manual mode at 1/60 the widest aperture I get is f5.6 and it is still underexposed. I increased the ISO to 400 but that does not seem to help. I tried setting the exposure compensation to 0.7 and that does seem to help. What am I doing wrong? I took a couple test shots of my children earlier and the same thing happened. I do not have any manual test shots to show at the moment but here is a link to some photos I did in Aperture mode. Not the best photos...please ignore their messy faces but could you please tell me if these are properly exposed? http://www.willoughbyphotography.com/gallery/3173038#174538351
There is an ugly flourescent light in my kitchen above the cabinets behind my son and to the left of my daughter. The kitchen is usually pretty dark. Why can't I get the aperture to open to 3.5? Would I need a higher ISO? I think I start to see noise at ISO400. By the way I don't mind if the background is underexposed at the Y because it's probably not the most attractive background anyway.

If I shoot in Manual and set the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/125 which aperture and ISO should I be using? I'm hoping the Y will be a little brighter than my kitchen.

If you are shooting in manual mode, you have control over both the shutter and the aperture. You could, if you wanted to, set the shutter speed to 1/6000 and the aperture to f/22 or you could just as easily set them to 1/2 and f3.5. Neither of these is likely to produce a useable image, but you have the power/control to do what you want.

So, pick your shutter speed. Now, select your aperture. Shoot a shot. How does it look. If you are shooting with flash, and the shot is under-exposed, dial in a little positive Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC). This will cause a longer duration flash, emitting more light... Don't worry about using exposure compenstation. You do that MANUALLY (that's why it's call manual mode). If you're not using flash, then you need to either increase the shutter duration (decrease it's speed) or open up the lens a bit more.

To answer your question about the exposure on your test shots. Just glancing at them, they seem to be pretty well exposed. While they could be a touch lighter and would benefit from some PP, but they are fine.

As for why you can't get the lens to open beyond 5.6 - well, we would have to know what lens you are shooting with. If it's a variable aperture lens (meaning that the maximum aperture available changes with the focal length), then that might be a factor.

To the last question - there is no way we can tellyou what exposure parameters to use. We are not there and can not take a light reading. That's why I included some hints in my previous post on how to get the right exposure set. You have to do this. You've already done that with the pictures of your children.

mercphoto · July 19, 2007

KMW wrote:

Thank you for your advice...If I shoot in Manual mode at 1/60 the widest aperture I get is f5.6 and it is still underexposed.

But that is what your flash is for, correct? I mean, if it wasn't under-exposed then you wouldn't need to add light with a flash...

I increased the ISO to 400 but that does not seem to help.

Whoa horsey, trying to shoot ISO 100 or 200 in the environment you mentioned simply will not cut it. 400 minimum. 800 likely.

I tried setting the exposure compensation to 0.7 and that does seem to help. What am I doing wrong?

You do not seem to know exactly what E.C. does and how it interacts (i.e. does not) with manual mode.

If I shoot in Manual and set the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/125 which aperture and ISO should I be using? I'm hoping the Y will be a little brighter than my kitchen.

The answer to this question varies from location to location based on available light, how much depth of field any particular shot will require, etc.

KMW · July 19, 2007

Thank you for all of your advice. I have learned a lot from all of you in just a couple days. I am going take all of this information and use it. I did figure out why I couldn’t open the aperture to 3.5. It does depend on my focal length. I have a Nikon 18-135 3.5-5.6 lens. Now I have a plan and I will make it work. I will post some pics when I’m done

Scott_Quier · July 19, 2007

KMW wrote:

I did figure out why I couldn’t open the aperture to 3.5. It does depend on my focal length. I have a Nikon 18-135 3.5-5.6 lens. Now I have a plan and I will make it work. I will post some pics when I’m done

Do I get a brownie point for guessing right about the lens?

Be sure to post a couple (or more) photos from the gig!

KMW · July 19, 2007

Scott_Quier wrote:

Do I get a brownie point for guessing right about the lens?

Be sure to post a couple (or more) photos from the gig!

Yes Scott you get brownie points for that

I will post some pics next week. Thanks again for your help.

LiquidAir · July 19, 2007

mercphoto wrote:

Whoa horsey, trying to shoot ISO 100 or 200 in the environment you mentioned simply will not cut it. 400 minimum. 800 likely.

Yes indeedy. When shooting indoors, my first guess at the ISO is usually 800. I typically like to shoot kids events at around EV 11 (1/125s at f/4) if I can get it so I'll only back off to ISO 400 only in the rare circumstance that I find myself at EV 12 at ISO 800.

When shooting with the flash, I typically underexpose the ambient by about a stop (give or take). So if the room turns out to be EV 10 at ISO 800, I set the camera up for EV 11 and let the flash take care of the extra stop. More commonly I find the room is more like EV 9 at ISO 800 which forces me to pick my poision of dragging the shutter to 1/60, bumping the ISO to 1600, opening the aperture to f/2.8, or letting the room fall somberly dark.

KMW · July 20, 2007

LiquidAir wrote:

Yes indeedy. When shooting indoors, my first guess at the ISO is usually 800. I typically like to shoot kids events at around EV 11 (1/125s at f/4) if I can get it so I'll only back off to ISO 400 only in the rare circumstance that I find myself at EV 12 at ISO 800.

When shooting with the flash, I typically underexpose the ambient by about a stop (give or take). So if the room turns out to be EV 10 at ISO 800, I set the camera up for EV 11 and let the flash take care of the extra stop. More commonly I find the room is more like EV 9 at ISO 800 which forces me to pick my poision of dragging the shutter to 1/60, bumping the ISO to 1600, opening the aperture to f/2.8, or letting the room fall somberly dark.

Thank you for your advice. I'm still learning and I'm not sure I understand what you are saying....How do you come up with the EV values? I know how to change the ISO, aperture and shutter speed in manual but how do you come up with the EV numbers? I know my goal is to stay with ISO 400 or 800, set the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/125 and open the aperture up as much as possible. I can only get 3.5 with certain focal lengths. If I am zoomed in it stays at 5.6 and then use the flash compensation to get the correct exposure. Is that correct? Do I change the flash compensation on the flash or camera? I have been using the flash compensation on the camera. It seems to work well and the histogram looks good. Well the birthday party is tomorrow so I am hoping for the best.

LiquidAir · July 21, 2007

KMW wrote:

Thank you for your advice. I'm still learning and I'm not sure I understand what you are saying....How do you come up with the EV values? I know how to change the ISO, aperture and shutter speed in manual but how do you come up with the EV numbers? I know my goal is to stay with ISO 400 or 800, set the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/125 and open the aperture up as much as possible. I can only get 3.5 with certain focal lengths. If I am zoomed in it stays at 5.6 and then use the flash compensation to get the correct exposure. Is that correct? Do I change the flash compensation on the flash or camera? I have been using the flash compensation on the camera. It seems to work well and the histogram looks good. Well the birthday party is tomorrow so I am hoping for the best.

EV 0 is f/1 at 1 second. Every stop below that adds 1 to the exposure value. So as an example, f/4 is 4 stops below f/1 and 1/125s is 7 stops below 1s so f/4 at 1/125s is 4+7 = 11. I put together a handy little chart of EV values here. What I find most useful about EV values is that they are a handy way of remembering lighting conditions. For instance, I find that almost all indoor lighting is between EV3 and EV7 at ISO 100. There are only 5 possibities and I know, given my gear and the kind of shooting I am doing, what my perferred strategies are for dealing with each of them. Generally I can guess the exposure for a room within a stop the moment I walk in the door and start getting set up.

As for keeping the aperture as wide as possible, given the lens you are shooting with, that is likely to be the right answer in this situation. On flash exposure compensation, I am afraid I can't comment on the Nikon system. I shoot with Canon gear and I understand that the TTL flash metering systems are somewhat different between the brands.

First Paid job- Need advice please

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