Probing into an indoor issue

[acidbyte]

I've gotten my Minolta A1 for a couple of months, and i still trying to figure out how come when i take any indoor photos especially those with high ceilings (weddings,indoor sports in a hall,concert). THe background is super dark or totally black. I went to buy a Minolta 5600HSD because i thought will make things better than the in-built flash but instead just a little improve. I've tried tilting my flash upwards,bouncing,diffusing and direct. I still get a dark background. Tried to use ISO 400. But super grainy so i set it at 200. Hmmm...recently i tried to take a indoor basketball competition(ISO 200,shutter at 1/100-125),but only those within 20M of flash wasn't too bad(couldn't get too near just in case the ball comes flying towards me) but the background is still dark. Need help from the PROs and those with experience with indoor photography in Clubsnap.

 

[mpenza]

It's not a camera problem. you need to use a slower shutter speed. the camera should have something like slow-sync flash which will expose properly for the background. the slow shutter speeds though could cause unsharp pics due to camera/subject movement. alternatively, you could use manual mode and set the shutter speed accordingly.

 

[mr_jason]

I've gotten my Minolta A1 for a couple of months, and i still trying to figure out how come when i take any indoor photos especially those with high ceilings (weddings,indoor sports in a hall,concert). THe background is super dark or totally black. I went to buy a Minolta 5600HSD because i thought will make things better than the in-built flash but instead just a little improve. I've tried tilting my flash upwards,bouncing,diffusing and direct. I still get a dark background. Tried to use ISO 400. But super grainy so i set it at 200. Hmmm...recently i tried to take a indoor basketball competition(ISO 200,shutter at 1/100-125),but only those within 20M of flash wasn't too bad(couldn't get too near just in case the ball comes flying towards me) but the background is still dark. Need help from the PROs and those with experience with indoor photography in Clubsnap.

The flash acts as the primary light source, when your indoors is big and not well lit. This is so you can handhold at anything above 1/60s, to prevent shake. As the flash isn't very powerful, only objects nearby will be lit by it, and the remaining background will be in darkness. This is why for indoors, people usually require faster lenses, as the larger aperture opening would allow more atmospheric light in for the same period of time.

In order to get everything including background to be bright, you will need to use a longer shutter speed, so as to allow more light into the camera. This usually means having to use a tripod as the longer exposure time would mean camera shake if it was hanheld.

In the instance of basketball game, maybe using long shutter is not such a good idea, as this will result in blur. Maybe using higher ISO, along with the fastest speed your lens will go to.

Just my 5 cents worth.

 

[clive]

think of it as 2 different paintbrushes: the first is to paint light upon the background exposure, the other (the flash) to paint light upon the main foreground subject.
for your case, its the first paintbrush thats not adjusted properly (shutter speed too high)

 

[Zerstorer]

Insufficient ambient exposure. You can do 3 things to improve the situation:
Lower shutter speed,
Wider aperture
Higher ISO

Try applying all 3 parameters instead of just varying one.