S95 flash

Just got my S95 yesterday, took it to a club setting with me last night....was experimenting with it. Carrying S95 is easier than carrying my DSLRs or even a 4/3 camera I previously owned. I took majority of photos with no flash, but I would like to know, in dark settings such as clubs and low light restaurants, what flash settings work the ebst with this camera?

Thanks
David

absolutic wrote in post #11646888
Just got my S95 yesterday, took it to a club setting with me last night....was experimenting with it. Carrying S95 is easier than carrying my DSLRs or even a 4/3 camera I previously owned. I took majority of photos with no flash, but I would like to know, in dark settings such as clubs and low light restaurants, what flash settings work the ebst with this camera?

Thanks
David

I've found no need for flash, even in the lowest light. The IQ does suffer a little in an extremely dark room, because the low light mode will allow the ISO to do to something like 12,000!

I have used the flash dialed down to the lowest possible setting. Works well, if you don't mind straight-on flash.....

absolutic wrote in post #11646888
Just got my S95 yesterday, took it to a club setting with me last night....was experimenting with it. Carrying S95 is easier than carrying my DSLRs or even a 4/3 camera I previously owned. I took majority of photos with no flash, but I would like to know, in dark settings such as clubs and low light restaurants, what flash settings work the ebst with this camera?

Thanks
David

I would start with whatever the automatic exposure system sets in terms of flash output. After taking a shot, look at it and determine if the flash output needs to be reduced or increased. It's easy to do in the flash settings menu.

One other point I've found with the S95. In low light situations, the camera wil try to brighten the image (e.g., give it extra exposure) in order to reach the preprogrammed brightness levels in the camera's computer. This tends to make night shots look like day shots sometimes. If this occurs, be prepared to dial the exposure compensation back to -1 or so to override the brightening the camera will want to do. This improved the look of my night and low light shots a lot.

I haven't had much time to play with mine yet, but I've had the most luck with manual. Obviously the exact settings depend on room size, on what you're photographing and on what look you're going for, but this is my starting point. I use flash on minimal and I set the ISO to 800 usually because that seems to be the highest I can go for a usable image. Web images might work at higher ISO, but they start getting real noisy. Then I put it on manual with maximum aperture and set the shutter speed to the slowest I can that won't get motion blur from regular movement of people in the shot and turn the flash on to the minimal setting.

These shots will still leave something to be desired in most cases, but they're safe settings for being able to snap shots without adjusting every time you want to click. With the minimal flash the pictures don't get as much of that flat 'flashed' look from the head-on flash and the other settings are enough to pull in a bit of the background in a very dark room (thanks in no small part to the f/2 if you're shooting wide angle).

The main problem I see with the auto settings is exactly that tgara mentions above. The camera tries to brighten the scene too much. 90% of the time I'd rather have an underexposed image with less noise and no motion blur instead of an unusably noise and blurred shot with perfect exposure. Not to mention that if you're trying to convey the mood of a dark room, it loses the appeal when the picture starts looking like all the bright overhead lights were on when you took it.

elogical wrote in post #11651900
I haven't had much time to play with mine yet, but I've had the most luck with manual. Obviously the exact settings depend on room size, on what you're photographing and on what look you're going for, but this is my starting point. I use flash on minimal and I set the ISO to 800 usually because that seems to be the highest I can go for a usable image. Web images might work at higher ISO, but they start getting real noisy. Then I put it on manual with maximum aperture and set the shutter speed to the slowest I can that won't get motion blur from regular movement of people in the shot and turn the flash on to the minimal setting.

These shots will still leave something to be desired in most cases, but they're safe settings for being able to snap shots without adjusting every time you want to click. With the minimal flash the pictures don't get as much of that flat 'flashed' look from the head-on flash and the other settings are enough to pull in a bit of the background in a very dark room (thanks in no small part to the f/2 if you're shooting wide angle).

The main problem I see with the auto settings is exactly that tgara mentions above. The camera tries to brighten the scene too much. 90% of the time I'd rather have an underexposed image with less noise and no motion blur instead of an unusably noise and blurred shot with perfect exposure. Not to mention that if you're trying to convey the mood of a dark room, it loses the appeal when the picture starts looking like all the bright overhead lights were on when you took it.

Thank you. This is a good starting point. My problem is my social settings are probably when we go to a night club dancing with my wife, and she wants to have photos taken with her girlfriends and such, so they would quickly line up and you need to immediately quickly shoot, you have a second or two for your shot, otherwise the shot is lost. you don't have time to experiment, change your flash exposure or exposure compensation, etc. You have to just quickly perform perfectly and have everyone's face in focus.

I've noticed that in such settings of course, DSLRs perform the best. With a good DSRL you can easily perform in such conditions, but one would look silly dancing with a dslr in your hands. On the other hand, S95 is tiny.

The only thing I am concerned with while setting flash at a minimum is I don't want photos where a small portion of a body is illuminated and the rest of the body is dark (weak flashes tend to do it). Also the rule in low light is typcially to expose to the right, or better to overexpose than to underexpose, because you don't want to bring more noise in PP where there is already plenty.

I agree that auto settings don't work. With auto-iso especially, since Canon does not have, unlike Panasonic and Nikon, ability to set the absolute minimum shutter speed in auto-iso, I noticed that it woud go down to 1/4 to 1/10 and I got shaky blurry photos. I noticed that I need at least 1/25 to 1/30 even at wider apertures to sufficiently freeze these subjects in low light.

absolutic wrote in post #11652558
Thank you. This is a good starting point. My problem is my social settings are probably when we go to a night club dancing with my wife, and she wants to have photos taken with her girlfriends and such, so they would quickly line up and you need to immediately quickly shoot, you have a second or two for your shot, otherwise the shot is lost. you don't have time to experiment, change your flash exposure or exposure compensation, etc. You have to just quickly perform perfectly and have everyone's face in focus.

I've noticed that in such settings of course, DSLRs perform the best. With a good DSRL you can easily perform in such conditions, but one would look silly dancing with a dslr in your hands. On the other hand, S95 is tiny.

The only thing I am concerned with while setting flash at a minimum is I don't want photos where a small portion of a body is illuminated and the rest of the body is dark (weak flashes tend to do it). Also the rule in low light is typcially to expose to the right, or better to overexpose than to underexpose, because you don't want to bring more noise in PP where there is already plenty.

I agree that auto settings don't work. With auto-iso especially, since Canon does not have, unlike Panasonic and Nikon, ability to set the absolute minimum shutter speed in auto-iso, I noticed that it woud go down to 1/4 to 1/10 and I got shaky blurry photos. I noticed that I need at least 1/25 to 1/30 even at wider apertures to sufficiently freeze these subjects in low light.

I'm totally with you on a lot of this. I don't want full auto since I want control over how my pictures look, but that doesn't mean I want to stage each shot either. I like to go through the trouble once of setting everything how I like and then just click away for the most part. That's the whole reason for picking up an s95 anyway, being able to bring it out to the bar, to parties, family events, etc where I don't want to deal with the slr.

As far as shooting to the right, I normally try to do that as well but I should clarify what I mean by underexpose. For bar shots and dark room party shots, I'm not saying that I underexpose as in shoot darker and push it in post processing to make it brighter, I just mean that I accept it as inevitable to have pictures where the overall tone is kinda dark and a little detail is lost. You know, the kinda pictures that show that they were taken in a dark room. In order to perfectly expose to what the camera light meter expects, it would make the shot appear even brighter than it actually looks in person when you're there.

On the S95, I really wish you could dial in flash exposure comp more specifically, there does seem to be a big difference between minimal and the medium setting. In some cases, I agree that it needs to be medium or maximum to have any effect at all, it's just completely dependent on how far away the subjects are and and how dark the room is. The problem I have with bumping it above minimum is the balance between flash exposure and ambient exposure. I'm usually trying to get a decent ambient exposure in order to have some detail in the background instead of just a shot with one of my friends exposed by flash on a totally black background. The trouble is once you bump up to iso 800 and a slow shutter speed to pull in the background, it's really easy to overexpose someone close to you who is in range of the flash.

Interesting topic though, I'll have to review this again after I've had more time to play with the s95 and see if I change my mind on anything.

I knock mine down to -2. Does wonders and does blow out people's faces too bad.