Lights turned off

Love it. Shot a wedding last Saturday in a 4H building and as soon as the processional started and the ring bearer started down the aisle someone was playing with the light switch and turn off all the lights. Almost total darkness, the only light was coming from the windows and my camera/flash was all set for bounce. I shot anyway and ended up with a host of underexposed and a few blurry raw files. They tried to turn the lights back on but it was the kind that are in stadiums and take 15 or 20 mins to warm back up and come on, by that time the ceremony was over. There are a lot that are not recoverable of the ceremony. It is straight on flash for me from now on.

Your ability to bounce is not affected by the ambient light. Only thing that affects flash exposure is the flash power/duration, your ISO, your aperture, and of course the "path" (distance) the light has to travel from your flash to the subject (as well as the reflectivity of the bounce surface)

as the one shooting the pictures shouldn't you be able to just adjust settings real quick for the situation and shoot straight flash or drop shutterspeed to capture more light with it in bounce? Why keep shooting anyway? Adjust for the situation.

I wouldn't shoot a wedding without AF assist which would have helped get the focus right. lights go out? make sure I'm in M, slow shutter. . . the flash will freeze movement, still bounce, turn flash to M, test 1/1, chimp, set 1/2, chimp till things are just right. Use AF assist (if working alright) to help with focus.

It still depends on how high the ceilings are and what not but you could have pulled it off with bouncing. If your camera/flash is set for bounce I would guess it should only take you 15 secondsish to switch things around instead of continuing to shoot. No need to go straight flash, just figure out how to do things on the fly.

If I shot straight on with the flash on the camera, there would be red eyes galore, the only white to bounce from was a very high ceiling and I did some testing and all was fine until they turned the lights out. I reduced my shutter to 1/30 but that was still too very underexposed. I agree I should have been prepared. I have he focus in AI Servio but for some reason the AF either didn't work or it was too dark. Yeah, I should have been more prepared mentally but I was at a total loss in my thinking when the lights went out. I looked thru the viewfinder and all I saw was a shadow of people walking toward me..guess I paniced. Next time I will just have my equiptment on a bracket and shoot straight so then it won't matter, no more adjustment needed...I know I'll have enough light to keep shooting. I guess I kept shooting not wanting to let everyone see I'm doing adjusting in the middle of the processional and that 15 seconds I would have missed almost all 4 brides maids coming down the aisle..they weren't walking slow either.

that's some fast walking.

AF assist doesn't work in AI Servo. So that's the problem there. Change to one shot and get what you can. I've never really had a problem with red eye with a hot shoe flash and even if I did some post processing would have helped. All you needed to do was turn it to AV, one shot AF, ISO whatever, swivel the head down and shoot away on ettl. bam, getting shots you couldn't get while trying to bounce.

tfizzle wrote in post #10472794
that's some fast walking.

AF assist doesn't work in AI Servo. So that's the problem there. Change to one shot and get what you can. I've never really had a problem with red eye with a hot shoe flash and even if I did some post processing would have helped. All you needed to do was turn it to AV, one shot AF, ISO whatever, swivel the head down and shoot away on ettl. bam, getting shots you couldn't get while trying to bounce.

Ok, thanks for the word on servio and af. If I chose AV I'm afraid the camera would pic a slow shutter to go with it. Would it be better to do manual and pick my f/4 or 5.6 and set the shutter to 60 or 30? I was shooting at 800 ISO anyway.

Shooting wrote in post #10473214
Ok, thanks for the word on servio and af. If I chose AV I'm afraid the camera would pic a slow shutter to go with it. Would it be better to do manual and pick my f/4 or 5.6 and set the shutter to 60 or 30? I was shooting at 800 ISO anyway.

Absolutely - manual is the way to go... manner of fact I believe you and I were involved in a similar "discussion" sometime within the last year or so about such situations as these .

Av or Tv will mess you up in situations like this, and you are correct that AV would result in a slow (blurring) shutter speed. Set the camera on manual, ISO either 800 or 1600, and you still could have bounced, 1/30 second shutter, and even f/4 or 5.6. There would have certainly been enough residual strobe light to give you good images at f/4, using one shot AF and not servo.

sapearl has it right. I had a brain fart. Always M, however, if it's almost dark with ettl it will freeze the subject and with no other light hitting the sensor it shouldn't really be blurry. I've shot bands at 1/40 SS and they are moving all around like crazy and the flash freezes the subject and the slower SS allows me to capture some of the ambient around them.

It would do the same with strobes set up too even without ettl.

sapearl wrote in post #10473688
Absolutely - manual is the way to go...

Agree 100%. Honestly, I have never even used Av or Tv - I'm too chicken and don't understand canon's exposure algorithms when using flash. (Actually, I'm too lazy to care).

I'm not saying I use manual exclusively because I've reached some great height of technical ability... I'm just too dense to use anything else.

Once you use only a single setting, you just get comfortable with it.

If someone turned the lights off i'd have switched to direct flash and would've gotten photos that were not great but acceptable. If you weren't notified in advance then I don't see that you could be held responsible, but i'd expect a professional to adjust in 10 seconds or less to get an ok photo no matter what lighting conditions happened.

tim wrote in post #10474658
If someone turned the lights off i'd have switched to direct flash and would've gotten photos that were not great but acceptable. If you weren't notified in advance then I don't see that you could be held responsible, but i'd expect a professional to adjust in 10 seconds or less to get an ok photo no matter what lighting conditions happened.

Yeah..I guess I just panicked, first time that has happened to me and the people coming down the aisle....Knowing all this now gives me more confidence and I'll be ready and also will have a gel ready to make things easier in post since I shoot raw.

And you've been shooting for 30 years??

cdifoto wrote in post #10503298
And you've been shooting for 30 years??

At the risk of piling on, I was just thinking the same thing.

Peacefield wrote in post #10505427
At the risk of piling on, I was just thinking the same thing.

I'm sure you do everything perfect..right? Never miss some shots? Never get any out of focus ones? I guess others could slam you for some of your work too. Your time is coming.

Shooting wrote in post #10510980
I'm sure you do everything perfect..right? Never miss some shots? Never get any out of focus ones? I guess others could slam you for some of your work too. Your time is coming.

Look, buddy, I didn't say I was perfect and have frequently poked fun at my own challenges if not the occassional disaster on this forum. These are demanding, fast paced, challenging days that we're trying to photograph, all while being creative to boot. That said, someone turning out the lights would not have had any impact on my bounced lighting, more importantly, I would KNOW that turning off room lights has no effect (other than to throw off my intended balance of the lighting) so I would have still gotten the shot for my client, and I know that going direct flash would not have even been the solution to your problem. These are not advanced principles, they're actually pretty basic and something that should be in full grasp by anyone claiming to have been a photographer for 30 years and a "pro" for 10.

And even if you didn't know that, who cares? The issue is you were coming on kind of obnoxiously in another thread. Coming across the way you did, I think you can understand why some (including a few before me), might respond a litle obnoxiously ourselves.