Need C & C regarding indoor lighting & use of flash, (3 pics)

[johnstoy]

Need C & C regarding indoor lighting and use of flash.

[mizuno]

Looks like you've got some white balance issues.

Did you shoot RAW or JPG?

[tim]

What Dan said, plus

#1 - underexposed (bright light in the background is prob the cause)
#2 - dunno how you made it look like this, but it looks plastic and fake. There's also a funny outline around the guy.
#3 I like it just fix the WB

No reason to use ISO1000, go to 1600 to get more shutter speed. I read somewhere that anything other than the standard stops (100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200) are just software trickery rather than the sensor actually working at a different ISO, but that's not for sure.

[jamiewexler]

Your edits are better form a color standpoint, but still missing a bit in the exposure department. It's a tough one because you are trying to fix exposure issues after the fact with PS.

So rather than trying to tell you how to fix them after the fact, let me talk about how to nail your exposure in the camera so that you don't have to do so much fixing at your wedding in a couple of weeks.

The first shot is exposed correctly for the room, but the dancing couple is a bit dark. You needed a bit of fill light on the couple.

The second is exposed correctly for the dancing couple, but the room is dark. You used too fast of a shutter speed.

Combine the background exposure from the first one with the exposure on the couple in the second and you will have a well exposed photo.

To do this, all you would have had to do was shoot the first shot with your flash on. I.E. use the same settings for the shot, but add some flash to fill in the subjects. In a situation like this, the ambient light is constant in the room, so figure out the manual settings that capture the ambient they way you want to as soon as you enter the room, then turn on your flash and adjust the FEC to light your subjects correctly. You might have to adjust the FEC as folks in lighter or darker clothes enter the frame, but the ambient exposure will remain consistent.

Here's an example of this technique from Saturday's wedding:
http://www.jamisonwexler.com/images/StacyShaun20070908192549a.jpg

Using a flash with ambient does cause two different color temps to share the frame, but I find that using the Hue/Saturation control in PS, selecting the yellow channel, and reducing it by -20 or -40 helps to reduce the background warmth.

[kato1]

Jamie

Nicely explained.

I learn more each time I look on this forum.

I had never even considered the resultant differences in the colour temperature between the subject illuminated by the flash and that by the ambient light.

I love photography but I guess that I, like a lot of other less technical people, concentrate too much on the subject of the image and forget to examine the finer details. Lesson learned!

The hue/saturation adjustment will be of help to me too.

Thanks

[Chris]

Jamie, that was an excellent lesson in lighting, especially for someone like me that doesn't have a clue. Thanks for taking the time to post a sample of how that type of shot can be done better and what you do with the flash to make it so.