Near on night weddings

[PIXI_666]

So now it is almost winter in OZ...i had a wedding last weekend and another in august. I have seen gorgeous night shots from kawter and ken and a few others...their night B&G shots are always perfect. I jsut want to know how to achieve these type of photo's withOUT the "Stark" flash or even with them being too dark too overexposed/underexposed etc etc all the problems we run into with shooting "People" in the night OUTSIDE...

I know its better if you have a nice candle setting or some slight lighting from one side etc. thats great but what if you dont have that? And your flash is really giving you a buggery of a time making people's faces flushed right out and the ground looking overexposed while subjects and underexposed?

Any suggestions or help would be great - i have until august but id like to really be able to do some portraits at night time espesh with city lights in the bground etc. (Again cant figure it out?) I can do NIGHt shots without people lol and i can do people shots without night time!!

Del

[roanjohn]

Hey Del,

Here are some helpful hints if you haven't seen this site already :-)

http://www.dg28.com/technique.html

Ro1

[spencer87]

Hey Del,

Here are some helpful hints if you haven't seen this site already :-)

http://www.dg28.com/technique.html

Ro1

nice link. thanks for sharing!

[PIXI_666]

Thanks for that - took me a while to get back here but that link is excellent!!

[picturecrazy]

That link is awesome. I've used some of his techniques in the past, but he is always using his strobe, which I do not use or want to tote around when doing wedding shots, but it's still a great learning site.

If I have no slaves with me and I want to get that night shot without having the flash spill over and light up everything else, this is what I do.

Put your camera on a tripod and compose the shot. Set to ISO100, maybe 200. Meter the scene without flash and find a good exposure that will give you the background lighting you want, but hopefully keeping the couple totally black. Adjust the ISO/aperture (I like ISO100 ~F11+ for night shots for a clear, noise-free picture with neat lighting effects) so the shutter speed is around 5-10 seconds. (though I've done with all the way up to 30 second shutter) Take some test shots or use a light meter to find the right flash power, using the MANUAL setting on your 580EX, and do this on the 85 or 105mm flash zoom setting. Once you've found a good flash power, remove the 580EX from the camera, and hit the shutter. Then run a few feet to the right or left of the camera, aim the flash at the couple and hit the TEST button to fire the flash. Try hitting them with flash at different angles to get different effects, but I'd start with about 45 degrees to the camera, the flash held slightly above their head level pointing down towards their chests. If the flash is too bright in the middle, then zoom it out a step.

Now you got a beautifully exposed night scene, the couple properly exposed, a more flattering and pretty angled light source, and the zoom setting on your flash will hopefully minimize spilling the light onto the scene... all with only your basic camera/flash/tripod setup.

Obviously, this is more for the formals parts, and not something you could do for the ceremony.