Help! Bad lighting!

[pgowder]

Ok, I'm at an event this weekend and the lighting inside isn't great.

Here are some of the photos I've taken so far:
http://www.powwows.com/galleries/sho...ry.php?cat=563

I'm shooting with a Minolta 7D and a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 using a flash on shutter priority. Shutter speed of 125.

Thanks for the advice.

Also, I'm broadcasting the event live if you ever wanted to see a Pow Wow:
http://www.powwows.com/video/index.html

[another view]

Guess I'm a little confused - are you looking for advice on how to shoot due to the bad lighting? Thought we talked about it a little before; definately do the custom WB and use the highest ISO you are comfortable with. If you're using flash, you can probably get away with a little lower ISO - 400 should be great.

[pgowder]

Guess I'm a little confused - are you looking for advice on how to shoot due to the bad lighting? Thought we talked about it a little before; definately do the custom WB and use the highest ISO you are comfortable with. If you're using flash, you can probably get away with a little lower ISO - 400 should be great.

Yes, but it was a different kind of lighting and I was having problems.

I think I got it worked out. I had problems with the flash washing everything out though. How can I improve this?

I set the ISO at 800, was that too high?

If you can, please take a look at some of the photos:
http://www.powwows.com/galleries/sho...ry.php?cat=563

I would love to hear advice on how to make these even better.

[another view]

The flash looks a little bright in these, but not by a whole lot. With digital, I'd probably reduce my flash exposure by a 1/3 to a 1/2 stop in the couple that I looked at (that would make the flash less obvious but would still do the job). You can do this by setting your aperture "wrong" if using non-TTL auto mode or setting an exposure compensation on the flash if you are using TTL.

Adjusting the ISO or lengthening the shutter speed will give you more exposure to the whole frame - areas covered by the flash or not. This is based on not using TTL flash, which will recognize all of this and take it into account when metering.

ISO800 isn't necessarily a bad thing unless you or the camera are not compensating for the faster ISO speed. The more-powerful on camera flashes have a pretty good range at ISO400 or 800. You may not need 800 which will lower the amount of noise if that's a problem, but even a well exposed ISO800 jpeg from a DSLR shouldn't be too noisy.

Hope this helps - if you have any more questions, are you using TTL flash? BTW, don't do a custom white balance when shooting this way. Auto WB should be OK seeing as you're using flash - otherwise try setting the WB to "sunny", etc. which is about the same color as an electronic flash. The background (areas not lit by the flash) will be off color, but there isn't much you can do about that unless you want to spend some serious time in Photoshop (don't even know where to start there...).

[pgowder]

How do I know if it is TTL?

Thanks for the advice!

[another view]

Check the manual and see how you're setting the camera up. I'm not familiar with Minolta and you need to be anyway!

My story: I use a Fuji S2 which is built on a Nikon N80 body, and a Nikon SB28 flash. The TTL mode on this camera is bad, just-forget-it's-even-there bad. But I can set it up that way by hitting the right combination of buttons on the flash itself. The way usually I shoot with it is Auto mode. This doesn't use the TTL flash sensor, and uses the sensor inside the flash instead. It's very common on older flashes from before TTL, like the Vivitar 283 and 285. It's not a perfect option but much better in my case. Fuji buys the camera body from Nikon, and it's set up for film use (I think), then Fuji guts it and turns it into a DSLR. My theory is that the TTL flash sensor is made for the reflectivity of film, and the reflectivity of the sensor is different so the flash exposure is wrong. And with digital, you don't have much margin of error. This is how my life is and will be, unless I'm shooting film (almost foolproof-accurate) or until a DSLR comes out that I want to replace my S2 with (other than the D2X at five grand).

Hopefully your camera is better in this department, probably is. They've done a lot of good things with it.

[another view]

I guess I never noticed - West Columbia SC?

My wife and I spent a night of our honeymoon almost nine years ago in Columbia, outrunning hurricane Fran. We were in Charleston and she wanted to leave (I thought it would be cool, but came to my senses). Went out for dinner at Outback Steak House and everyone was glued to the big screen TV's like the superbowl was on - but it was the weather channel! Never seen that before.