(Want to ask) Photography technique: In a confined room

[otsyahoo]

I find that, may be most of you do agree, taking pictures in a confined room is always a challenge.

Example: Birthday celebration, talks, classroom etc.

Light source is not always adequate and even with F2.8, the speed tends to be like 1/30 or less .. even you shoot with an VR lens, the object may move and that would cause blurs in the picture.

An with F2.8, there could be another problem, the optical quality is not always the sharpest at F2.8 .. but like F11 or something.

Jacking up ISO is an option, but you rarely want to go beyond 1000. Even that, in some occasions the speed is still could be lower than 1/50s.

Then using intelligent flash (like SB800 for Nikon), but you know the light is still inadequate for the relatively large room.

What should we do then? To shoot a crispy sharp picture for the entire room that capture everyone (say some 20-30 people) in the room?

Thanks

 

[Nerd]

Rent a couple of SB600s and put them on the wall in different parts of the room, in slave mode, then use your SB800 on the camera to trigger them. If still not enough.... hmm... get even more SB600 / slave units.

 

[ortega]

1. increase your iso speed
2. use as slow a shutter speed as you can hand hold without camera shake
3. use aperture of f5.6 or f8
4. use the diffuser cap on the SB800, point the flash head up to the ceiling and fire away

if one flash does not light up the room then as above add more flashes

 

[user111]

use manual mode -> set shutter speed to 1/60s. use direct flash to light up the people. background can underexpose a bit.

 

[Snowcrash]

time for multiple wireless flash to like up the 'whole room of people'.

 

[zac08]

Floodlights... flood the whole room with lights...

 

[Nerd]

As Ortega has mentioned,

1. increase your iso speed
2. use as slow a shutter speed as you can hand hold without camera shake
3. use aperture of f5.6 or f8
4. use the diffuser cap on the SB800, point the flash head up to the ceiling and fire away

if one flash does not light up the room then as above add more flashes

If you really want the best image quality (low noise, sharp, as good a contrast as your lens can give you, etc, etc,), set your camera to the lowest ISO, use an aperture which is optimal for your lens, use perhaps some SB600s carefully place in the room to give a flood effect. The problem is that you'll loose the room's usual ambient mood lighting if any.

But if you're able to get to the room earlier and setup your flash units, you can experiment with different positioning / power ratio to give a bit of mood lighting. One more step you can go is to gel your flashes in different colours to enhance the mood even more.

Depending on the size of the room, it might take anywhere from 4 SB600s to over 12 SB600s to light up the room evenly or with mood lighting and colours while shooting at your lowest ISO. Reason is that you'll want more flash units so as to lessen the probability that the flash units runs out of power before your shoot is finish. I think the rate for a SB600 is less than $20 per day.