jemmy said:
Originally Posted by pacereve
great photos! I love the lighting and mood of each. My favorite must be the chocolate fountain, the dancing comes close second.
What do you do to achieve the great indoor lighting?
A good flash, camera on full manual, high ISO, drag the shutter. :thumbup:
Now, can an eager-to -learn dummy like me ask, how high should your iso be to get the superb quality like above without noise?? (my indoor photos using flash are BODGEY!)and can you explain the 'drag the shutter' for me? really need to learn all your tech. talk xx
Gorgeous work as usual Cindy! xxx
IME, ISO depends a lot on the camera. Our 300d was almost unusable due to color noise at anything above ISO800. Our 20d handles 800 like a champ, but gets a little grainy at 1600. Unless we're shooting a wedding outside, now with the 1d-MkII-N I start at ISO1000 and work up from there. Shooting in RAW and processing in Capture-One, there's virtually no noise even at 1600, and only noticeable noise at 3200.
Our typical settings for a reception if we've got a nice low white ceiling to bounce flash off of are ISO 1000 or 1600, f/2.8, and around 1/125 s shutter speed. That's kind of a baseline, and then we tweak it with the first few shots to dial it in to the exact lighting conditions. Cameras on full manual. The worst are reception locations with windows along one wall...you get horrendous light falloff depending on the distance into the room and are constantly adjusting shutter speed.
As for dragging the shutter, I set the flash to fire with a 2nd curtain sync and run a slower shutter speed.
Typically what happens when you push the shutter release button is...
shutter open/flash----exposure----shutter closed
That means that your flash pops the very first part of the exposure, and if hte subject moves or something else happens, you end up with funky motion blurs.
With 2nd curtain sync, the process is:
shutter open----exposure----flash/shutter closed.
The flash pops the very end of the exposure.
By running a slower shutter speed (or higher ISO), the background is exposed for longer, thus making the background look more well-lit, and then the flash properly exposes the foreground subject.
Holy crap I hope I explained that right. I know how it works in my head, but explaining it is a whole 'nother ball of wax.
