Trouble in low light??

JayClark79

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Ok iv been toying around with my external flash taking portrait in my basement.. It can be darn near black in my basement and when I use my wireless remote it has no problem focusing and snap right on me... Even at settings of 1/200 f 2.3 (using my 50mm 1.8)

Now last night I was at a wedding reception where it was definently brighter then my basement was I had to shoot at 1/20 f1.8... and the camera still had a difficult time focusing on a subject and shooting.. Why would this be?

The photographer at the wedding had no problem or so it seemed firing off pics when ever he wanted.. and he was using some kind of 2.8 not sure what size but it definently wasnt a prime.
 
Hi,

There could be several reasons for this. First I noticed that you were shooting at 1/20. There is really no reason to go slower than 1/125 when you use flash because the flash is always faster than 1/125 seconds. There are exceptions. If you use a fancy flash that fires several times etc, you may need to go slower. Also, if you want more background detail (such as a cityscape beind your subject) you will want to go slower but then you need a tripod fo sure. The four ways for you to increase lighting with a normal flash are: a) increase the strength of the flash, b) increase the aperture, c) focus the flash a little better, d) increase the ISO sensitivity. Hope this helped a little bit.

Tom
 
Ok iv been toying around with my external flash taking portrait in my basement.. It can be darn near black in my basement and when I use my wireless remote it has no problem focusing and snap right on me... Even at settings of 1/200 f 2.3 (using my 50mm 1.8)

Now last night I was at a wedding reception where it was definently brighter then my basement was I had to shoot at 1/20 f1.8... and the camera still had a difficult time focusing on a subject and shooting.. Why would this be?

The photographer at the wedding had no problem or so it seemed firing off pics when ever he wanted.. and he was using some kind of 2.8 not sure what size but it definently wasnt a prime.

I shoot Nikon and I don't know the off-brands like Canon but, in total darkness, you need a large aperture lens (which you have) AND a focus assist lamp. I suspect that you have a weak assist lamp on the flash head and, when remote, it was closer to the subject than it was when on the camera.

By the way, there's no reason to shoot that slow with flash unless you want to burn in some ambient light.
 
This actually makes alot of sence because I did notice their focus assist lamp was alot brighter... I must of been trying to take pictures of people to far away... I just need to learn the capailities of my flash i guess... Thanks guys.. and yes I was burning ambient light into the pictures.
 

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