A Military Xmas Dinner with a special guest

Skinnifatkid · Dec 12, 2011

I am a serving member of 1 PPCLI (Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry). I have been serving for 20 and a bit years so far! I volunteered to take the pictures for our Mens Christmas dinner. The usual way this function works is, the troops sit down, presentations are done, pictures are taken of the presentations and that's where the photos stop unless someone has a point and shoot or a camera on their phone. I took 1200+ pictures of this event. Granted, Bret "The Hitman" Hart has never been to one of these functions before! I take a lot of pics at work during sports and other to practice and learn what to and what not to do. I took the better part of 90% of these 1200+ without any flash. No, I'm not uploading 1200+ for C&C, just a few that I felt captured a moment.
I only use manual now and for the most part the shots were taken with lower shutter settings and did use Auto on the ISO because I didn't want to screw things up as there were a lot of moving parts with the presentations. I snapped a lot of Bret Hart also with the troops signing prints and posing with him.

I am including some pics here that I snapped for C&C to understand better what I could do differently to make the next time better. I would appreciate any feedback on the pics I am posting as well as the linked ones in Flickr.

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And the Flickr Link; 2011 Mens Xmas Dinner - a set on Flickr

Thanks for looking! SFK

WesternGuy · Dec 12, 2011

First impressions - you really ought to think about a fill flash or something, because there is no detail in the uniforms or the suit, and there are dark shadows in the faces. Also, the skin colour appears to be a little red - maybe there is a reason for that(??). Other than that, they are nice snap shots. As far as the linked ones on Flickr, a lot of folks here will not click on a link, because there is always the potential of a virus or something similar, not that you would ever be involved in that, but links, even to Flickr, carry too much risk for a lot of people, including me. Best bet is to pick you best 3 to 5 images and post them for C&C. My 0.02¢ FWIW.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Skinnifatkid · Dec 12, 2011

WesternGuy said:
First impressions - you really ought to think about a fill flash or something, because there is no detail in the uniforms or the suit, and there are dark shadows in the faces. Also, the skin colour appears to be a little red - maybe there is a reason for that(??). Other than that, they are nice snap shots. As far as the linked ones on Flickr, a lot of folks here will not click on a link, because there is always the potential of a virus or something similar, not that you would ever be involved in that, but links, even to Flickr, carry too much risk for a lot of people, including me. Best bet is to pick you best 3 to 5 images and post them for C&C. My 0.02¢ FWIW.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

I wanted to minimise the use of the flash. I really didn't want to wash things out. The majority of the building is fluorescent lighting and the room we were in for these was really brightly lit. My aperture may have been a little on the dark side. I was trying to keep things quick and simple while being able to capture the images for the troops. I haven't touched any of the pics, primarily because I want to know how to make my pics less "post processed" and more straight out of the camera excellant.

I'm tracking the link reasoning and understand that fully.

Thanks for commenting

2WheelPhoto · Dec 12, 2011

the pics are screamin' for a little fill lighting

Skinnifatkid · Dec 12, 2011

I noticed after I looked at them again after Westerguy's comment. I can watch for that now when I take more in the same situation. When I was checking them in my LCD display, I thought they were looking good. Not using a flash. I was concentrating on noise and not how dark they were.

I will definitely watch from here knowing that could be an issue. Thanks.

WesternGuy · Dec 12, 2011

If properly setup and used, fill flash should not "wash things out". Without knowing anything further about what kind of gear you have - camera + flash - it is a little difficult to offer advice in this area. Most of today's matched sets of digital camera+flash are "smart enough" to recognize the level of flash that is appropriate/required for decent fill and set up the exposure accordingly, granted, a lot will depend on the ambient light, but I have used a Canon 580EX with my 5D in a lot of outdoor situations to provide fill - so a matched camera and flash should be able to handle your indoor situation and, of course, you can always tone down the flash output if you have problems with the fill.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Skinnifatkid · Dec 12, 2011

WesternGuy said:
If properly setup and used, fill flash should not "wash things out". Without knowing anything further about what kind of gear you have - camera + flash - it is a little difficult to offer advice in this area. Most of today's matched sets of digital camera+flash are "smart enough" to recognize the level of flash that is appropriate/required for decent fill and set up the exposure accordingly, granted, a lot will depend on the ambient light, but I have used a Canon 580EX with my 5D in a lot of outdoor situations to provide fill - so a matched camera and flash should be able to handle your indoor situation and, of course, you can always tone down the flash output if you have problems with the fill.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

I understand what you are saying, it's the practice I am after...need to do. I have a Canon 7D with 430ex and the 430ex II. I really want to improve, first step was the non-use of the flash. I agree, the flash would have improved things a lot. I just need to work that into my training. With the fact that I had a celebrity to shoot for the majority of these, I didn't want to ruin the experience for the troops and have him ask me to stop shooting.

I appreciate any thoughts/suggestions. Seeing as it was work where we did the dinner, I tried some shots the day before and the morning of. The room where the snaps were taken in the posts was new to me for the pics and I tried to get the settings right with the first few shots. I was working the settings on the fly and fast too.

Flash training, next on the agenda! Thanks

WesternGuy · Dec 12, 2011

I can definitely appreciate the desire to improve on your flash capability and experience - I have set that as a project for myself this winter, with the emphasis, for me, on off-camera flash. I am not sure if you have seen it, but there is a reasonably decent book by N.K. Guy, entitled, Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography which you may want to have a look at. As well, there is a recent one by Syl Arena, called Speedliter's Handbook - Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites. I just got my copy of Arena's book and it looks pretty good as well. Thought I would mention these in case you are looking for some reference material. Good luck with the flash training.

Cheers,

WesternGuy
===========================================
P.S. I just remembered, each of them have a web site or two where they also have posted a lot of material on Canon Flash stuff...

N K Guy: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/ , Part II : http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index2.html and Part III :http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index3.html

Syl Arena: http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/technical/getting_the_most_from_speedlites.do
Part 2: http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/technical/getting_the_most_from_speedlites_II.do
Part 3: http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/technical/getting_the_most_from_speedlites_III.do
Part 4: http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/technical/getting_the_most_from_speedlites_IV.do

and then there is this one on fill flash: http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/resources/articles/2011/fill_flash_use_EOS_article.shtml

There are also additional links on each of these sites.