Preparing For Wedding Shoot

[tonyr0584]

Cheerleader practice tonight so a chance to test out the new flash.
This was shot at ISO400 f5.6 1/160 with Canon XTi set at Evaluative Metering. I tried ETTL but the shots seemed darker than normal. What if anything under these conditions could have been done better. I used this as a test session to prepare for a wedding coming up..... I know big difference between weddings and cheerleader practice. The wedding reception will end up in this same kinda light in the evening so figured what better way.... anyway. Please comment.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions to help prepare.

[tonyr0584]

BTW.... flash was a Sigma 500 DG Super

[MDJAK]

Bump your ISO up as high as you can get away with. That will brighten up the room. Also, bounce your flash off the ceiling; that will give much better results.

mark

[tonyr0584]

Bump your ISO up as high as you can get away with. That will brighten up the room. Also, bounce your flash off the ceiling; that will give much better results.

mark

I did try a few at 1600 but by the time I adjusted ap and ss to keep from being blinded by light reflection off their faces and white shirts, I came back to the same results as shooting at 400 it seemed. For this wedding I will be outside and probably a lot closer to the individuals and of course not so spread out for snap shots. Everything up to the reception will be done in good daylight. The reception will be around 7pm until..... So for the Sigma I'm assuming shoot straight at my subject and use ETTL? I did a few with ETTL at this practice, they seemed acceptable hard to tell from so far back.

[GertS]

I second Mark, but expect to use a lot of energy for the flash when directing it up the ceiling. Works only with a certain distance and bright color of the ceiling.
Recycling the flash takes time too.

[wazmunstr]

i wouldnt try straight on. try at a 45 degree angle. or get some sort of defuser and shoot straight up like the stofen or lightsphere.

[rammy]

The thing is it still looks like a "flashed" pic, know what I mean? You want to try and expose for the ambient light and let the flash ETTL for the people. That way you get a more natural looking shot.

Your focal length was 28mm (44.8 on the xti) so keeping everything the same, you could have dropped your shutter speed to just below 1/100 to bring in more ambient light. This would have helped with the background.

In this shot, lowering the view and getting the full reflections of the girls in the floor would have been cool.

[howzitboy]

it looks flashed but i dont see any shadows (from the flash) so his exposure was perfect. id still lower the flash 1 stop so its not soo "bright".

[rammy]

it looks flashed but i dont see any shadows (from the flash) so his exposure was perfect.

Being there, you would not have seen it this way. See the lights in the back on the ceiling? They have projected some light at the back but the exposure has been set to capture the foreground only, not the ambient light.

This shot could have been so much better because I doubt very much that the background and corner of the stadium was that dark. Dialling down the flash will just make the whole scene darker. Capturing the ambient light first is important and then popping the flash to fill-in some foreground shadows.