What could of been done differently?

With winter fast approaching I'm moving into using flash more and more during weddings.

I had one this weekend which wasn't difficult but made me question my way of doing things in a sense of 'What could I of done better'

My issue is noise, not the lighting as such.

The camera used for this image was a 1D4 with a 24-105L at F4 and a 580EX II with a stofen gold diffuser. The ISO was 6400 and the Shutter speed was 1/40 sec.

I know some answers would be to use the 24-70 2.8 but at that aperture I can either half the ISO or double the shutter speed. 1/40 sec handheld on a non IS lens can be problematic.

The High ISO was chosen to get the ambient light in the shot, the gold diffuser was used to better match the tungsten lighting in post production.

I would of preferred to use a 1/4 CTO gel and bounce the light instead but the new gels hadn't arrived.

What would you of done, with the equipment I had?
I also had the 24L but wanted a bit more detail in the images.

Original Image before colour correction:

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Personally, I think you did a fine job with your equipment. The noise in the photo will be all but non-existent in print.

Doesn't look to bad, even cropped, slightly cold. I would probably have asked a guest if they minded scooting there chair around a bit so I could get closer, which would avoid needing to crop that far, looks very tight space wise!

Did you do auto WB in post? It looks a little cold just like when I attempt to do auto WB in LR, then I adjust manually. In crap light conditions you may want to use a grey card and custom WB to get it right in camera.

If your goal was to get the closeup (pic #2) you should have used a longer FL otherwise noise is inevitable with the low lighting and at that high ISO. But I think pic #1 is just fine.

Thanks guys.

Yep, I auto'd WB in Lightroom but the actual finished image I warmed it up a little. Auto WB tends to leave the iamge a little cold. It's hard to balance the natural light with the tungsten.

I knew it was going to ba a problem when I went there earlier this year to check it out.

I need to buy a small set of steps

Not sure what you expect from the 1D4 at ISO6400. That looks about right. Did you have the pull the exposure back up some or was it nailed?

When I am using flash at receptions, I am usually at ISO1600-2000. I find that brings in plenty of ambient light.

It was quite dark and I had to push the exposure 0.41 Nick.

Even though I use faster lenses, I'm tyically shooting at f4+ at the reception anyway as I want a deeper DOF much of the time. Just to offer a different take on the problem and the solution, one is that I don't try to bring ambient up THAT much. I like my ambient to be 2-3 stops under. This allows my subject to pop out of the image a bit and it buys me much more total exposure.

I assume that your crop was done prior to using software for noise but something like Noiseware should clean that up pretty nicely. That and you can't fret too much over noise as it's rare that a client will look at their images with the same critical eyes and most receptions shots are not what the couple plans to blow up into a 20x30.

Gel wrote in post #11167342
It was quite dark and I had to push the exposure 0.41 Nick.

That would explain the noise, although as I mentioned before, noise is to be expected at ISO6400. I don't think it looks that bad at all.

Underexposue and cropping tighter will make the noise more prominent in the shot. I typically use 2 lights to kick a little light in there to help. I have one off camera tucked in a corner out of the way and one on a bracket.
Depending on the room I will aim the off camera flash at the ceiling or edge light the subject.
Lightroom 3 really does some amazing work at reducing noise.

So, in addition to using the extra flash head off camera I would have slightly overexposed the shot and moved in a little tighter then used lightroom to reduce the noise and recover some highlight detail.

This.