dogs/christmas tree

Ok,
I need some tips. I am trying to take photos of my dogs in front of the Christmas tree, with no flash because then you cannot see the lights good. but in order to have no flash and make the lights show up good, I have to have a slow shutter speed and it's hard to get all the dogs to hold still. Is there any way to be able to do this with my not so perfect subjects?

My approach would be to use a tripod, and shoot two images as close together time wise as possible, one with flash exposed for the dogs, one without.

Then the fun part, you should be able to photoshop the images together, might be a bit of work though.

The only other option I can think of is to increase the ambient light as much as possible without losing the Christmas light visibility, wind up the ISO to 1600, get a tripod and hope your dogs sit still. My neighbours dogs would endure this, they sit nice and still most of the time!

Here's a trick that should help.

It's in the menu as "Slow Synchro" - On/Off

It is difficult for me to explain how it works, but I will do the best I can.
Normally, when shooting with flash, you would expect that the shutter stays open only as long as necessary to capture the small period of time when the flash fires. This would give you the expected result - a picture with no lighting other than the flash.

However, If you turn Slow Synchro to "ON", the shutter no longer works that way. If the exposure meter says the shutter should be open for 1/2 second, then it will stay open for 1/2 second, even though that would seem to be inappropriate, since you are using flash.

What happens is that you get the picture with the 1/2 second exposure but those things that are lit up by the flash get their extra exposure from the flash. The result is as if there was a flash picture but there is also the ghost image of everything else also in the picture.

It is best to use Av mode for this to be effective.

I knew I would not be able to explain that!

OK, this works with external manual flash, at least. We did a family portrait this evening here at home. Even though I was using my standard 2 flash setup, with umbrellas, etc., I wanted the tree lights to show instead of being overpowered by the flash units.

I set up the shot as normal, using the 1/200th sync shutter speed and proper aperture to capture the right amount of flash. Once I was happy with the settings, I only changed the shutter speed to 1/10th second and warned my family to stay very still until after the flash had gone off (I was using the timed shutter and running into position).

Worked like a champ. Obviously, I was using Manual mode on the camera. Also, there were no other ambient lights on in the room (after I focused, then turned them off).

Realize that if your dogs move, it probably won't be noticeable, as the flash has performed 99% of the lighting for the subjects. You may get a little ghosting. If so, up the shutter speed a little faster and try again (assuming your lovely subjects will stay around long enough for you to experiment).

That trick works great if the background is out of flash range, I have used it on one of my film EOS bodies, not sure if it is on the DSLR's? In this instance I think it would also light the tree (just assuming here that the dogs are right in front of the tree).

Taxidermy?

Bob - that's the default mode for Av with E-TTL on the EOS digitals. You need to have custom functions (which the un-hacked 300D doesn't) to turn it off! The difficulty may be getting the dogs, close to the tree, properly exposed while not over-exposing the tree via flash and drowning out the lights, since the 300D also lacks FEC. Putting a couple of feet between the dogs and the tree, and using a longer lens, may help with that.

If you have an external flash or strobe unit, you could put a few feet between the dogs and the tree and then place the flash unit as close as possible to the dogs (the closer the better) without getting it in the frame, set the exposure and then drag the shutter.

The closer the flash is set to the subject the faster the fall off of light behind the subject.

Mel

Dear Jon,

I don't have access to the 300D manual - in fact, for some reason I can't even find it at Canon's Web site. According to the manual on the 350D, this looks like slow synchro is the default, if I understand what it says.

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Thanks everyone for all the suggestions! I will be trying them all this weekend with my husband's help to control them all. I will post the results for all to see!

Right. Unfortunately, there's also no Flash Exposure Compensation on the 300D, so you're kinda stuck with what the camera defaults to. I'm assuming that OP had tried using flash unsuccessfully, which gave rise to the question.
Here's one from a few years back with my Kodak DC260, using full auto/on camera flash - you can see some of the lights, but not everyone still uses the C7 light strings. Our family does (my sister's pack).

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Dear Jon,

That's a bunch of handsome dogs!

My wife volunteered me to shoot her friends three very active collies around their Christmas tree last year. Talk about a frustrating experience.

I shot some with flash, but the best looking ones were with ambient light with some extra light reflected onto the dogs. Dogs eyes are very reflective and a flash will often turn them into a blank white spot.

I found that I had to sit on the floor with the camera pointed for a while until the dogs got used to me. (I also had to clean a few nose prints off the front of the lens.) Once the dogs started to ignore me, I got my wife and her friend's husband to try and get the dogs into position. The friend would then kneel behind me, give a "Stay" command and talk to the dogs so that they were looking attentive and towards the camera. I also did series where they were looking at a 3/4 angle and profile using this technique. Out of several hundred pictures, there were only a few that I was really happy with. At least one of the dogs was usually looking the wrong way, improperly positioned or some other fault, such as someone's hand reaching in to position a dog.

The best shot was actually an impromptu one that occured when the yougest dog grabbed a stuffed elf's hat and started to walk off with it. One of the older dogs grabbed the hat to "protect" it. They were actually still for a moment when both were pulling in opposite directions and I managed to get the shot. Maybe sacraficial elves would be a good plan.

Tow of my dogs are, in fact, collies. The other two are dachshunds. I am gonna take photos of the collies sitting, and me and my husband holding the doxies. This weekend will be...a learning experience

I would love to see some of those pictures if you have them anymore!

My sister and her husband do Obedience, show and breed Labs - Mowgli's Labs, if you're interested in one (ADVT.).