Shooting in a ballroom with low light: Some advice please

HI all,

I'm now starting to book events and parties that are held in halls and ballrooms that don't have the best light. The lighting is similar to what I see in a lot of wedding receptions.

I'll be shooting with a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens, a D300 and an SB-800 flash. I've always had very good results but most of what I've done has been outdoors in gazebo's and pavilions where there was a reasonable amount of ambient light contributed.

Now I'm shooting indoors with what I think will be fairly low light. The D300 can capture great images at ISO 1600 but I don't care to go higher because I don't feel the images are as clean as I would like. I can shoot the 85mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 with no problem at all.

I'm going to try some available light shooting but suspect that most of the event will be shot using the flash on camera.

So, my question is this....

When shooting in these conditions do you shoot using Aperture Priority with the flash in TTL mode (typically giving very good results) or do you work in Manual mode, selecting aperture and shutter speed, keeping the flash in TTL to get correct exposures? Or do you work entirely in Manual (camera and flash)?

Also, what techniques do you employ in terms of exposure and balance between ambient and flash? In these low light conditions do you even worry about that balance?

Depending on what part of the hall I'm shooting there will be walls or a ceiling to bounce off but in many cases I'm going to direct the flash slightly up or to the side to avoid that direct flash look.

Any pointers or tips from wedding and event photographers would be greatly appreciated.

Camera in manual and flash in E-TTL

I bounce when I can and I usually use something to direct some of the light forward. My favorite accessory at the moment is the Demb Flip-it.
Depending on the room, bouncing the flash can often give you enough background light, that you don't need to shoot at ISO 800 or 1600...although sometimes you may want or need to do that.
Sometimes I want the background to be dark, so I put the SS up to max (1/250) and I may point the flash forward. The E-TTL takes care of the subject exposure and only gives enough light for them, not for the rest of the room. You do have that direct flash, flat lighting though.

I have started using an off-camera light for reception halls. I put a light on a stand or somewhere out of the way and find the best angle for it. It might be up into the ceiling or aimed right at my shooting area. I use a radio trigger to fire it, while at the same time, keeping a flash on the camera for fill.
This can be used for all sorts of things. It can light up your background, it can be a main light (to your on camera fill), it can make a great accent/hair light for people...it can even make for a nice bright highlight. Check out the last couple photos of THIS post, on my blog.

Thanks Mike. Very nice images on your site.

Towards the end of the event I will be doing some group shots and portraits but for the most part I'm going to be moving all over the place trying to be the fly on the wall so unless I set up many lights around the hall I can't pull it off with off camera lighting. I'm going to have to rely on the on camera flash.

I use camera on manually set shutter and aperture. Off-camera I have a radio triggered Main light (small softbox), on-camera I have my Fill (small softbox), both flashes are on some form of exposure automation, depending upon which camera and flash units I'm using. TTL/ETTL control of on-camera unit. Auto control of off-camera unit.
And I generally try to balance ambient vs. flash exposure so b/g is not a dark cave.

Thank you Wilt. So if I can't use an off camera light and the hall has dim lighting what is the best approach to balancing the ambient so that my backgrounds are not dark?

TMR Design wrote in post #6205035
Thank you Wilt. So if I can't use an off camera light and the hall has dim lighting what is the best approach to balancing the ambient so that my backgrounds are not dark?

Approach is the same, you simply don't get as nice facial modelling when using only an on-camera flat light!

Thank you again Wilt.

I do several different approaches - and just like BigMike, I shoot completely in manual, and let my flash go on full ETTL mode. I do have a somewhat added advantage of a more powerful Quantum Flash, and I feel this flash is more accurate than the 580 in situations like these.

I'll do a mixture of these things: bounce it with a bounce card and usually go +1 FEC, go full sync speed (1/250th) and straight on flash, or manual and drag my shutter to allow more ambient light to contribute to my image and intermix my flash with that. Additionally, I also have off camera Norman 200B's with pocketwizards adding in some light as well.

It's really all situational. Some places have horrible ceilings. Some places have weird painted ceilings and walls, and can produce a bad color cast. Some places have tunsten/flourescent lighting and can be a bit of a challenge to balance out.

Are you planning on using gels on your flash units? Let me rephrase that - gels would provide a lot of the color balance, background ambient to flash. I had my first go at this a week ago with mixed success but was generally pleased with the results.

And I definitely shoot manual on the camera, meter for the ambient conditions, flash in ETTL (on a bracket) with a Lumiquest ProMax unit on it.

Zansho wrote in post #6205486
I do several different approaches - and just like BigMike, I shoot completely in manual, and let my flash go on full ETTL mode. I do have a somewhat added advantage of a more powerful Quantum Flash, and I feel this flash is more accurate than the 580 in situations like these.

I'll do a mixture of these things: bounce it with a bounce card and usually go +1 FEC, go full sync speed (1/250th) and straight on flash, or manual and drag my shutter to allow more ambient light to contribute to my image and intermix my flash with that. Additionally, I also have off camera Norman 200B's with pocketwizards adding in some light as well.

It's really all situational. Some places have horrible ceilings. Some places have weird painted ceilings and walls, and can produce a bad color cast. Some places have tunsten/flourescent lighting and can be a bit of a challenge to balance out.

Thanks Zansho. Makes good sense. I'm shooting Nikon and have 3 SB-800's so I'm going to see what I can do with off camera lighting but as I said, I'm going to be moving all over the place and the hall is fairly large.

Titus213 wrote in post #6205514
Are you planning on using gels on your flash units? Let me rephrase that - gels would provide a lot of the color balance, background ambient to flash. I had my first go at this a week ago with mixed success but was generally pleased with the results.

And I definitely shoot manual on the camera, meter for the ambient conditions, flash in ETTL (on a bracket) with a Lumiquest ProMax unit on it.

Hi Dave,

I hadn't planned on using gels. I do have 1/8 and 1/4 CTO to use if I want.

Big Mike wrote in post #6204728
I have started using an off-camera light for reception halls. I put a light on a stand or somewhere out of the way and find the best angle for it. It might be up into the ceiling or aimed right at my shooting area. I use a radio trigger to fire it, while at the same time, keeping a flash on the camera for fill.
This can be used for all sorts of things. It can light up your background, it can be a main light (to your on camera fill), it can make a great accent/hair light for people...it can even make for a nice bright highlight. Check out the last couple photos of THIS post, on my blog.

Question: How do you keep a flash on-camera for fill and a radio trigger to fire your off-camera flashes at the same time? Am I missing something?

240dreams wrote in post #6205915
Question: How do you keep a flash on-camera for fill and a radio trigger to fire your off-camera flashes at the same time? Am I missing something?

You could do it with this doohickey and the right cords: http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …versal_Flash_Ad​apter.html

Alternately, you could plug the radio trigger into the cameras pc sync port and still use a flash on camera.

There are brackets with a cold shoe that you can attach to the bottom of your camera that will hold a Pocket Wizard off the side and you plug the PW into the sync jack of the camera. This allows the flash to be on the camera's hot shoe and the PW to be triggered by the sync jack.

Such as this:

http://cgi.ebay.com …Q_trksidZp1742.​m153.l1262