Ceremony Lens Advice Please

[stsinner]

Please give your opinion of which of my three lenses I should use for a ceremony tonight. The ceremony will be indoors in a hall smaller than a gymnasium, and somewhat poorly lit (it's an American Legion).

Another complicating factor is that I'll be in the ceremony, so my wife will have to take the pictures. Therefore, the camera will have to be on AUTO, and she will not be able to change lenses due to being scared of the camera..

The choices are:

70-300
18-55
and 50 f1.8

I thought the 70-300 in order to get the handshake, etc, when the certificates are presented, but it can't back out very far with 70 being the lower limit. The 18-55 is a good all-purpose lens, and likely the best choice. And the 50 is great for indoor shots in low light, but we have two young daughters, so my wife can't be up and doing the foot-zoom thing, so maybe not a good choice. When considering lenses, remember that I do have the SB-600 speed light.

Which would you use? Anyway, thanks for giving it any amount of thought.

 

[Big Mike]

I'd suggest using the 18-55mm in conjunction with the SB-600. Point the flash upwards at an angle, to bounce off of the ceiling. That should give decent results without being too complicated for her to handle.

 

[stsinner]

Thanks, Mike.

 

[stsinner]

Thanks for the advice.. Here is the outcome with a little crop and level adjustment:

 

[stsinner]

I think there may be something wrong with my camera, because neither of those look clear to me, and my camera was set to AUTO... It was once knocked over on a tripod, which snapped the hot-shoe mount right off of my first SB-600, and I'm thinking maybe something is out of calibration... These were shot with the kit 18-55 AF-S NIKKOR 3.5-5.6 GD lens..

I think I may have to send it in for service... And play with the P&S for a while..

 

[stsinner]

Question-with a flash like the SB-600, which is electronic, does the flash know that position you've got the head pointed and does it adjust the output power accordingly?

 

[Big Mike]

Question-with a flash like the SB-600, which is electronic, does the flash know that position you've got the head pointed and does it adjust the output power accordingly?

When used in E-TTL mode (not sure exactly what Nikon calls it) the flash does adjust itself, no matter what position or direction it's pointed. TTL stands for 'through the lens'...so what is does, is fire a small pre-flash and then the camera measure how much lights comes back though the lens. The camera/flash then decides how much power is required for the exposure and that's the power level it fires at. This all happens very fast, you probably didn't even notice that it fired twice.

There is still a way to adjust the flash exposure...FEC (flash exposure compensation). When you adjust this, it adds or subtracts power from the level that it determined from the pre-flash. Many people find it necessary to use more or less FEC on a regular basis...you may find that you prefer it to be at +1.

These look clear enough to me, but I'm only looking at resized versions. If you think there is a problem, post up a sample of a 100% crop along with the shot information.

 

[stsinner]

I believe Nikon calls it i-TTL, or Intelligent Through The Lens.

Here's a photo that I haven't touched. Looks too dark to me, and the SB-600 fired..

Nikon D50 Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60) Aperture: f/4 Focal Length: 18 mm Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV Flash: Flash fired, auto mode ISO Speed: 400
Orientation: Horizontal (normal) X-Resolution: 300 dpi Y-Resolution: 300 dpi Software: Nikon Transfer 1.2 W Date and Time: 2008:11:18 21:59:02 YCbCr Positioning: Centered Date and Time (Original): 2008:11:18 22:14:44 Date and Time (Digitized): 2008:11:18 22:14:44 Maximum Lens Aperture: 36/10 Metering Mode: Pattern Sub-Second Time: 90 Sub-Second Time (Original): 90 Sub-Second Time (Digitized): 90 Color Space: sRGB Sensing Method: One-chip colour area sensor CFA Pattern: BLUE GREEN GREEN RED Digital Zoom Ratio: 1/1 Focal Length In 35mm Film: 27 Contrast: Soft Compression: JPEG Quality: NORMAL White Balance: AUTO Sharpening: AUTO Focus Mode: AF-A Flash Setting: NORMAL Auto Flash Mode: Optional,TTL White Balance Red, Blue Coefficients: 9730/1, 27649/1, 1/1, 1/1 Thumbnail IFD Offset: 1693 ISO Speed Requested: 400 (May be different to Speed Used when Auto ISO is on) Photo corner coordinates: 0, 0, 1504, 1000 AE Bracket Compensation Applied: 0/1 Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x001D: D50 Tone Compensation (Contrast): AUTO Lens Type: 6 Lens Min/Max Focal Length, Min/Max Aperture: 18/1, 55/1, 35/10, 56/10 Flash Used: 7 Bracketing & Shooting Mode: Shooting Mode: Single Frame AE/Flash Bracketing Off White Balance Bracketing Off Colour Mode: MODE3a Lighting Type: SPEEDLIGHT Noise Reduction: OFF Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x009A: 78/10, 78/10 Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x00A2: 293215 Total Number of Shutter Releases for Camera: 6696 Saturation: NORMAL Digital Vari-Program: AUTO Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x0E10: 1787 Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x0E22: 0, 0, 0, 0 By-Line (Author): Kyle Bradley By-Line Title (Author Position): Nikon digital camera user Copyright Notice: � 2008 Kyle Bradley, all rights reserved Image Width: 1504 pixels Image Height: 1000 pixels

 

[Big Mike]

Here's a photo that I haven't touched. Looks too dark to me, and the SB-600 fired..

I'd guess that the problem is the bright white shirt that is close to the camera. White reflects more light, so when the flash took it's reading from the pre-flash, it got a lot of reflection from the white shirt, which made it think that it didn't need a lot of power. Also, most of the rest of the things in the image are farther away than the closest white shirt, which means that they would need more light anyway.

It looks like the flash was pointed forward for this shot. If it had been pointed up at the ceiling, the light would probably have been more even. You might still have need to bump up the FEC to +1 though.

Working with flash in these situation, usually takes a bit of time and practice before you get a good handle on how your gear will react to these situation. Also, it's pretty easy to take a few test shots and check the camera to see how they came out. If they look too dark, then bump up the FEC.

The situation that usually give me trouble is table shots with white table cloths. The table always comes out much brighter than the people.

 

[stsinner]

Thanks, Mike. Being a wedding photographer, I'll bet you've seen these situations many times. I could have gone there early to practice, but that white shirt would have been there.... How to you compensate for that?

Thanks

 

[Big Mike]

Once you start shooting in a hall like that, you will usually pick up what settings work best. Then when you do get a shot that is not working, I'll just adjust something and shoot it again. You know you are getting good when you can anticipate what the E-TTL will do and adjust before hand so you don't have to shoot it twice.

When there is something white throwing you off, it's OK to keep cranking up the exposure/power until you get proper exposure on your subject's faces. Or if you can compose the shot so that the white isn't so prominent.

Normally in this type of room, I'm bouncing the light...which is a lot more forgiving than shooting forward. I also use a bounce card accessory to throw some light forward while bouncing...so my adjustments might be to the angle of the flash, the angle of the bounce card or to the FEC.

Then there is ambient light to consider, and where or not I want to have it show up in the photo or not...and how much. I'm often adding off-camera flash to the mix as well, so there are a lot of things to think about.