Help!! Crappy Event Photos (Lighting)

[rweakley]

Ok, I have a friend who asked me to take some pictures of his recent commissioning ceremony. I recently bought my Rebel XSi and the only accessory that I have for it currently is a 430ex II flash. The lens is the kit lens. Unfortunately the room was very dim and the ceiling very high. It is a concert hall, and I assume acoustical concerns are why there were only small white panels hanging from a higher dark ceiling. So there was no possibility of bounce flash at all. So I aimed my 430 straight on and completely washed out certain parts of the photos. I tried a -2/3 flash compensation, but that completely underexposed the photos. I also experimented with switching between Program to Manual using roughly f/4 and 1/50th or so settings just to get different metering effects. Even using manual I couldn't meter for the background because the shutterspeed was way too low, even at higher ISO and wider apertures.
So anyways, here are the unedited photos. Photoshop gave me some significant improvements, but still nothing to write home about. I'm not so much concerned with composition, as I was limited in my position by family members and other friends getting into position for photos, not to mention being unable to get onto the stage.
Luckily he had an uncle with a 30D and 4x faster lens than my kit who probably got much better photos than I, but I'm still trying to work on my skill.
Sorry for going on and on! :p
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[rweakley]

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[zelseman]

Any particular reason your ISO was at 400? Crank that to 800 or 1600 to get a decent exposure without flash.
Not even fast glass or a better body would really help indoors if you are limiting yourself to ISO 400 for no reason. lol

[rweakley]

I guess either I had the auto ISO on the program mode or I was worried about grainy pictures. I think I put some of them (which I didn't post) on ISO 800, but I didn't go any higher than that. Even then, I still used the flash. Next time I will overcome my fear of high-ISO!
As a side note, does the kit lens focus really poorly in dimly lit conditions, or is that a symptom of all lenses? The flash of course has a red line pattern for focus assist, but I'm tempted to say that the flash pulse of the pop-up would have been of better assistance.

[zelseman]

Every kit lens I have used has hunted in low light.
I have not used the Xsi's kit lens but i have used the original 18-55 and it hunted really bad in mediocre light.
All of my lenses lock focus very well in low light with my 50 being the exception, it sucks.

[rweakley]

Well I mean to say that once it locks on focus (I think the focus point flashes and the camera beeps) the images do not look sharp to me when viewed on a PC screen. Not so when shooting with adequate light outdoors.
Does my camera/lens need to go in for warranty, or do I just need to shell out for some better glass...which will have to wait several months I'm sure!

Edit: I'm not precisely sure what hunting means. I assume it means the focus shifts back and forth, but eventually settles in the right place? Or does it sometimes settle in a less than optimal place?

[MT Stringer]

better glass would definetly help. Something with a f/2.8 or faster. In my opinion, you were in a tough shooting situation. I agree with the others, ISO 800 or 1000 would have helped, even with the flash on auto (ETTL).

[zelseman]

Hunting is when the lens bounces back and forth trying to get focused.
If your camera locks focus(red square and beep) then it should be focused on the spot where it locked.
Id test your lens camera combo in better conditions on a tripod to test the focus(row of batteries, newspaper type)

[rweakley]

I'll check that out. I do have a tripod and I can take it outside and shoot something like you described. Thanks for the suggestion.

[rweakley]

Here is an unedited 100% crop of one of the photos. I always selected which AF point to use and put the active sensor right in the ol' eyeball. :cool: Just seems like it could be much sharper to me.
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[rweakley]

Here are some newspaper shots as suggested, cropped to 100%. The AF point was always put on the dot over the "i" in the word "buried". All were shot wide open (3.5 and 5.6 @ 18mm and 55mm respectively). One set was obviously from a closer distance; the other from about 4.5 to 5 feet away. I angled the camera roughly 45 degrees down (as judged by my eye).
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4203712655_5fb4ab9446_o.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2654/4204469744_18619c35d5_o.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2634/4204470426_c6a3cbb868_o.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2637/4204470202_9ae14f741c_b.jpg

[zelseman]

I cant tell which image goes with which apeture ...but the good news is,....
Florida got beat by Bama. Wonderful selection for a newspaper article.

[rweakley]

From smallest to largest images:
5-ish feet away, 18mm, f/3.5
same distance, 55mm, f/5.6
close up, 18mm, f/3.5
close up, 55mm, f/5.6

[JeffreyG]

Forget testing your lens to the nth degree and buying a $1600 L zoom. Your biggest problem is that you are shooting these with direct flash and not allowing ambient to enter the scene at all. You can get much better shots in this situation by directly managing the exposure.

Your shots are mostly ISO 400, 1/60 and f/4. This setting has ambient probably about 3 to 4 stops underexposed. The flash is doing everything. FEC ain't gonna fix that!

I would increase the ISO to 1600 and then drop the shutter speed (if needed) until the camera is set to expose about 1 stop under ambient. This might sound crazy (won't a 1/30 shutter speed be blurry?) but the flash is going to freeze your subjects, not the shutter.

Then put a CTO gel on your 430EX so that the flash color will match the room lights. Now shoot away. For the cost of a CTO flash you get better results.

This would be even better with a flash bracket to get the flash a foot or two above the lens centerline, but just gelling the flash and dragging the shutter (that's the term for bringing the ambient light into a flash shot) will make a world of improvement.

[egordon99]

I would have used my 24-70L @ f/3.5, ISO800-1000, and bounced my speedlight straight up. I shot a wedding in a similar looking room (with high ceilings). Shutter speed ~1/100s.

I also used my 70-200mm f/4 IS @ f/4 (obviously ;) ) and bumped the ISO to 1600 so the flash didn't need to fire at 1/1 (for faster recycling)

fast lens+high ISO, you'd be suprised at how high a ceiling you can bounce off of.

[rweakley]

Jeff, thanks for the lighting advice. The thread got a little skewed for a bit.
So if the shutter speed is slower, I unerstand that the flash is freezing the subject, but will everything else be motion blurred (without a tripod). Also, will the subject have a faint halo around it? For example if the subject is moving slightly, will there be a faint motion blur around the sharp image that the flash freezes?

Egordon, did you notice that the ceiling is not solid? You can see bits of it in the first photo. It's just white panels under a dark ceiling. Not ideal for bounce.

[JeffreyG]

Jeff, thanks for the lighting advice. The thread got a little skewed for a bit.
So if the shutter speed is slower, I unerstand that the flash is freezing the subject, but will everything else be motion blurred (without a tripod). Also, will the subject have a faint halo around it? For example if the subject is moving slightly, will there be a faint motion blur around the sharp image that the flash freezes?

Let's take this in two steps:

1. Will the background be blurred due to camera shake? Quite possibly yes, although having an IS equipped lens is handy for this type of shot. One thing to remember though is that the background is also likely to be outside of the DOF, and so it will be OOF. Some camera shake blur of the OOF background may not be very noticeable.

2. Will you see ghosting around the subjects? This is a maybe. For one thing, you should not be setting the camera to expose the background 'perfectly'. If you do the flash will be doing little more than fill lighting and the subjects will be blurry. The goal of 'dragging the shutter' is to underexpose the background to some degree so that the flash pops the subject enough to freeze them. This technique does not work for fast action but it is reliable in a slow moving event like you were shooting.

Done correctly, a dragged shutter will have a slightly dark background while avoiding that total 'subject standing in a cave' look that you can get otherwise (your first shot is an example of the cave look).

Egordon, did you notice that the ceiling is not solid? You can see bits of it in the first photo. It's just white panels under a dark ceiling. Not ideal for bounce.

If you have time before the actual event to practice a bit I might have tried a few test shots bounced. But overall I agree with your assessment....those broken up hung ceilings are likely to be tricky. You would be likely to see highly variable exposure as the flash hits and misses the bounce.

It's good to develop a fallback to bouncing in any case. Last time I wound up dragging the shutter I walked into a party to find the ceiling and walls painted a royal blue.

Here....ignore the utter banality of this shot. This was direct flash on camera with a 430EX. The light conditions were nowhere near as dire as your's, but this was ISO1600, f/4 and 1/80 (Ambient was correct one stop brighter than this). If it had been darker I would have probably underexposed the background even more to make sure the flash froze the subjects.

[rweakley]

Nice technique. I tried it out with a few objects on my coffee table, just to get a feel, and I think with some practice, I can get some good shots like that! Thanks again for the advice! :)

[JeffreyG]

Nice technique. I tried it out with a few objects on my coffee table, just to get a feel, and I think with some practice, I can get some good shots like that! Thanks again for the advice! :)

I like learning cool stuff like this that doesn't require a $5000 lens!

One last point relative to your sharpness concern. If at all possible in this kind of light use 'one shot' focus. The AF assist beam on your 430EX will allow your kit lens to focus in pitch dark but the AF assist beam does not work at all in AI servo mode.

[zelseman]

^ learned that the hard way...haha

[rweakley]

The AF assist beam on your 430EX will allow your kit lens to focus in pitch dark
At what distance?

[JeffreyG]

At what distance?

10 meters for the center focus point, 5 meters for the outer points.

[rhurwitz]

This is a great thread. I have experienced the same problems as OP. Many thanks to the folks who contributed such useful and straightforward advice. After an indoor flash setback at Thanksgiving, I'm hoping these techniques will salvage my reputation with the family this holiday season. ;^)

Roger