Nightclub photography help please!

[ginster509]

Hi,

I have a Fuji S9500 SLR camera, and I have been asked by a friend to take photos at his club nite at the end of November (I have done this before - some of the photos are shown on www.waxonwaxoff.org). Most of them were trial and error, more so than me knowing what I am doing!

Does anyone have any tips please?

Thanks

[Asylum Steve]

I have been asked by a friend to take photos at his club nite at the end of November. Does anyone have any tips please?

Hi. Welcome to the site. I don't know the exact look you're after in your pics, but having shot the South Beach (Miami) clubs for a number of years, IMO the best club shots use a variation of traditional flash and blur techniques.

You use a slower shutter speed to capture the background ambient light (which hopefully is a nice saturated glow of color), and pop a flash to freeze the foreground subjects.

The two examples below are not my best shots by any means, but pics I found pretty quickly without going into a detailed search. Anyway, they give you a good idea of the effect.

I should point out that In the first one, I was intentionally shaking the camera when the flash popped, which is why you get a more blurry or streaky bg. Obviously, the less you move the camera during the slow shutter, the less blurry the bg. It's a matter of taste...

I looked at the pics on the web site you link to. Most of them are the two effects shot seperately. They are either a slow shutter speed, which shows great color and movement, but blurry people, or a simple flash shot, which freezes the people, but has the dreaded dark "snapshot" background.

The trick is to combine the two techniques, and it may take some practice. With a manual camera, it's not too tough. If you're set on shooting on auto, I'd start by trying one of the fill flash modes, or a low light flash mode.

The camera should slow the shutter to try to capture the room light, then pop the flash to expose the foreground.

You may need to make some adjustments, as you do not usually want the flash to fire full strength, for it will overpower the rest of the shot. You want a nice balance between the bg light and the subject light.

If I were you, I'd practice on a "non-event" night, just to see the results.

Oh, and yeah, the two lovely "ladies" in the bottom shot are indeed drag queens, or as we say in SoBe, gender illusionists...

Good luck...

[ginster509]

Thank you so much for the advice - I generally use the aperture setting on my camera, rarely using the auto setting, and will definitely try out merging the 2 techniques. I have a slow synchro setting on the flash which is recommended in the manual (yes I read the manual) for low lit areas, so I'll give that a go. I don't have a flash diffuser yet, but I use teh cheap method of tissue paper over it, so I'll do that as well so that it is softer - I haven't found out how to reduce the flash power on the camera yet!
You're photos are really good, and are pretty much the effect I am trying to get, so I'll take your advice (you seem to know what you doing unlike me), and I'll let you know how I get on (if thats ok?). Thanks again.

[mattbikeboy]

The good thing about night clubs and dances -- people stick around for quite a while and it gives you a chance to play around with settings. I like shooting the lights and getting them behind the people dancing. I love vivid colors and night clubs are filled with fun lighting. I took this shot and then played with it in Photoshop to give it the Lensbaby selective focus feel.



I have a bunch of shots on my other workstation from events like this. I got bored long before the patrons did. ;)

mbb

[Sebastian]

Funny that I find this now, having just shot for the first time in a nightclub last night.

Steve's right on. What I like to do is to use the zoom function on my flash. It has the ability to zoom the flash head to compensate for different focal lengths, but I like to manually zoom it to the 50-75mm range and shoot wide (17mm or so). This creates a focused, sharp area in the center of the frame that's circled by colorful, blurry activity.

If the club has lots of spotlights then you can forego the flash altogether and simply try to time your shots for creative effect. The shot below was just handheld without flash. I waited for the spotlight to hit the lens straight on knowing that the slow shutter speed gave me a large window to catch it in. Blurry subjects are good in cases like these, they suggest dancing, fun, activity, etc.


ISO 1600, 1/10, f/4, 33mm, no flash

[Asylum Steve]

The shot below was just handheld without flash. I waited for the spotlight to hit the lens straight on knowing that the slow shutter speed gave me a large window to catch it in. Blurry subjects are good in cases like these, they suggest dancing, fun, activity, etc...

Wow, that's a cool shot. Not that I ever minded blowing some rolls of film to experiment, but isn't it so much easier (and fun) to try weird stuff with digital?

[Sebastian]

Wow, that's a cool shot. Not that I ever minded blowing some rolls of film to experiment, but isn't it so much easier (and fun) to try weird stuff with digital?

Thanks, Steve. Yeah, I don't mind trying things over and over again until I time it right knowing that each frame only costs me storage, and storage is very, very cheap.

[historybuff]

You culd also try high speed film for more traditional shots, like 3200 speed B&W - tends to work amazingly well in low light situations

[ginster509]

Wow! Thats some great advice. Thanks everyone. Had a terrible time when I last tried (but I think it was the amount of vodka I drank more than anything!).

Sebastien - I am going to do some digging around about zooming the flash - thats new to me. If you have any tips I'd be super grateful.

Still trying to learn the photoshop basics (I'm new to this whole thing you see), and am investing in some tutoring!

I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks for all your help - and for showing me some amazing photos! Very cool. (I'm jealous!).