Help Im in Vegas!!!

Ok I am using my Mark IIN in Vegas along with a 430ex. I was trying to take picture infornt of the Belagio but all I was getting was harsh flashes and not back ground. Im shooting in Av mode with varible ISO's. What am I doing wrong? I leave tomorrow so this will be my last night to get it right. Thans in advance!

Shoot in manual and use a longer shutter speed & high(ish) ISO. Maybe dial the FEC down a little.

*edit*
This is assuming you are shooting a subject (a person) in front of the Belagio and you want to get an exposure of both the person and the background.

Is the "Belagio" some sort of building, and at night? And this "Belagio" is your subject?

If so, your tiny flash will not have enough power to light up an entire building.

The nature of any light source will be to illuminate with high intensity for things that are close to it, and with quickly diminishing intensity on things are farther away.

You are not going to get consistent exposure on items both close and very far away with one on camera flash.

The camera used has no effect on this.

I suggest you get a tripod for the image and put the 430EX back in your camera bag. If you do not have a shutter release cable, use your self timer to trip the shutter so you will not shake the camera for the needed long exposure.

Enjoy! Lon

Much more info required.
When are you shooting? Day? Night?
Is there anything in the composition besides the building? People?
Is the building/fountain the subject, or the background?

When using flash, you will need to adjust your shutter speed to exposure for the background ambient light. The way you would adjust for the flash is with the aperture. If you are using the flash in ETTL 2, you won't have to adjust the aperture much. The Flash will increase power to compensate. Put your camera in manual mode. I would leave your aperture relatively wide open is you are shooting at night. You can close it down a little more during the day. Because the duration of the pulse of light coming from the flash is only about 1/10,000 of a second, your shutter speed will make no difference on the flash illuminated portion of the photo.

Adjust the shutter speed to absorb the ambient light from the background. You can get pretty sharp pictures handheld with relatively low shutter speeds. The flash makes the foreground nice and sharp. If you use a tripod, it will help to keep the background nice and sharp too. If you are shooting in the day time, you shouldn't have to use a tripod.

An example. at night: ON a tripod with ISO of 400, you would want an aperture of about 5.6 or lower and to get your ambient light, a shutter speed of anywhere from 1/30 of a second - 3 seconds. It all depends on how light out it is.

Test things out outside in the dark. The flash will expose for whatever you focus on that is close. You can set you f/5.6. Then take a bunch of photos while adjusting the Shutter speed down from 1/125 of a second. Notice the way the background or ambient light changes. This should help a lot.

I hope I am actually answering your question. I am sorry if this is stuff you already know.

I got one

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here is a different one

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If the images provided by JCED are close to what you are going for, then my advice above (and below) is accurate.

• Put that 430EX flash back in your camera bag.
  
  
• Put your camera on a tripod.
  
  
• Use a shutter cable release or use the self timer.
  
  
• Take all the exposures you need with different exposure compensations until you are happy.
  

londuck wrote in post #2918417
If the images provided by JCED are close to what you are going for, then my advice above (and below) is accurate.

• Put that 430EX flash back in your camera bag.
  
• Put your camera on a tripod.
  
• Use a shutter cable release or use the self timer.
  
• Take all the exposures you need with different exposure compensations until you are happy.

Enjoy! Lon

Right you are.
I forgot to ask whether is was people that you are trying to photograph. If you are then use flash, if your not, definitely get a tripod and follow londucks advice. I assumed since you are using flash you were taking people portraits.

I just got back from Vegas 2 weeks ago, took some shots in front of the Bellagio myself, here are 2 examples (probably not the best, but you should get the idea)

1. W/Flash and people (my brother and his wife) F/5.6, ISO 400. 0.8s

IMAGE LINK: http://farm1.static.fl​ickr.com …31856449_81ab98​b6f7_o.jpg

IMAGE LINK: http://farm1.static.fl​ickr.com …20626752_329b61​97a9_o.jpg

so how did u get the different colors to come out on the hotel?

It's probably the 3 sec exposure and catching it at the right point in the sequence

The different colors on the hotel come out with a slightly longer exposure, also, during the watershows, the lights tend to change colors (purple / pink), and when the watershow is over, the lights go back to the solid looking color (pic 1 in my above post). I don't think i took any shots of people while the watershow was running, so i'm not sure how they would have turned out. Generally you can get a slightly faster exposure when the show is running, due to the lights in the water.

is was the best I got:

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