Need help with shooting Night time portraits!!

[adigitalcure]

Ok so ill be shooting with the 300d and will be using a tripod. Can somebody give me some pointers with shooting portrait work under low night time lighting conditions. I want to shoot pictures of a friend on a highway overpass with the "light trails" as the background.

so im guess i should try and shoot on the slowest ISO speed as i can get away with?.....and then i guess shoot on TV mode to get the light trails??....i did just buy the sigma super 500 flash...any tips or know of any pages that might have tips with using the flash at night with out blowing out the background...??


thanks for any help..

Kevin

[cmM]

I would use manual mode (that's me though, I always use manual mode).
You can put the flash on the camera to light the foreground (your friend) and leave the shutter open for a longer time to get the light trails, say a few seconds.... you're shutter speed won't matter much, since the flash will light your friend. It's just a matter of how well you want the background exposed

[tim]

Like cmm said, set the shutter speed to get the background effect you want, the flash will expose the person in the foreground about right - you might have to tweak the FEC to get the look you want. I'd use M as well, for full control, it's easier than you think. Try with ISO 100, 5 seconds, and F8 to start with, and tweak as you need too - might need a bit higher ISO perhaps.

[ddelallata]

I want to see some pics of that.

[adigitalcure]

ok thanks for the help guys!!.. The shoot is tonight so ill hopefully have some pics to post later in the week!..

[PhotosGuy]

If you're not going to add light to his face, you might put a light stand behind him with an extention that touches the back of his head so he can feel if he's moving at all. That should be good for an 1/2 sec exposure at least. We used to shoot models & cars at 10+ seconds on 8X10" without any visible problems.

[EricKonieczny]

I have never shot in this exact setup but I shoot alot of low light and in long exposures in Bulb mode.

I would say the best thing is to make sure the model sticks the pose and doesn't move. It is easier said than done.

Looking forward to seeing these pictures.

[Kinger]

This might be a wrong suggestion, but here it goes. Try to set the flash for second curtain sync, this way the light trails on the passing cars will be behind the cars and not in front of them.