Clubbing photography - Guide

[Ansic]

This is photo guide i have prepared nearly year ago, but only recently put it together with gallery on the website.
(it may not work perfectly, if so just refresh)
For guide with gallery please visit Clubbing guide
P.s. I do not postprocess clubbing images. And i advise you to learn how to get great pictures out of the camera, unless they are paying extra!

Ultimate clubbing photography guide


Photographing in nightclubs is totally different story than any other type of photography, due to lighting, which usually is not constant. Lighting is the key here. If you are beginner you would set camera on auto or P and let it take a snap. Unfortunately, at this time you have to decide how you want pictures to look, not the camera. You will be working in M mode practically all of the time as there is nothing more frustrating than camera trying to adjust something to make it better, where it actually does not, and that usually ruins the shot. Lets get started.

Part 1
preparation
What camera to use?
Which lens?
Which flash?
What else?

Part 2
Practice
How to approach?
How to set the camera?
How to set the flash?
Anything else?


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Part 1
Preparation


What camera to use?
First at all, you need camera, that is DSLR. It seem quite obvious, but i have seen some people actually trying to use some bridge cameras. Sorry, it is not going to work. In these days this cameras are cheaper, better, more affordable and more advanced. If you want to buy one - simply get a Canon. That's what i use. That's what most of the professionals use. For a reason. You may be tempted now, but will regret later. I am not saying that Canon Cameras are better than the other (but you must admit - more pros than cons to go for Canon), it is your initial choice that will then allow you to buy loads of accessories, which are most common for most common cameras. Also second hand stuff, more to choose from.
Depending on your budget, you can buy cameras that wary in build quality, but are very similar in picture quality across the range (Canon), or have higher build quality across the range but quality vary a lot (Nikon). You will find many cameras with Full HD video recording, which is handy feature, and also nicely shows how powerful the processor on the camera is, which must handle 1920x1080 video (Canon) and how much it struggle even with 1440x720 (Nikon). You don't need fast frame rate, but it might be handy on some other occasions, you will not have only one camera for clubbing (at least for now). Higher maximum ISO is better, because usable ISO will be high as well. You don't need high ISO at all the time but it is handy to have it when you need it. And you will, quite often. Mpix resolution is entirely up to you. It is handy to crop, if you need, or if you are shooting for the website you can reduce picture size.
Summarizing you need some sort of DSLR camera capable of high ISO, with manual controls (Are there any without?) flash mount. That is it. Plenty to choose from. But think what else you could be using it for.

Which lens?
This is difficult question. You may assume that faster lens (smaller f/ number) is better. Few years back i thought so, too. In fact you don't need any f/1.4 or similar, simply because they are primes. And as you could imagine, in crowded night club there might be no room to step back to get some in frame., or just can not get close enough. So that means you will be ideally looking at some zoom lens. They come in many varieties and flavours, as well as with fast aperture or/and image stabilization. In fact you don't need it at all. As we all know smaller aperture gives us shallow depth of field, which may be bad if you are trying to get group of people in shot and they are not in perfect line (and you are not in front of them exactly). Is nice for weddings and portraits where you can somehow prepare shot, but at the party where is a lot of buzz and Ferry Corsten is on decks not many people will want to wait for the shot, pose, smile, and make it easy. Lenses with aperture 4 to 5.6 should be best, as they give reasonable depth of field, are not so expensive, and with good camera you can boost up ISO to compensate smaller aperture opening. Image stabilization systems are not useful, simply because your exposure times quite often will exceed times where those are effective, and also way you will handle your camera will not help with stabilizing image; actually you do not need to stabilize camera, later you will see why.
Summarizing your lens would ideally some sort of wide angle, aperture around 4 or more will do, reducing costs, and no stabilization is needed.

Which flash?
This is quite straight forward. Any with the tilting/swiveling head. You don't need most powerful one as you will not fire it straight ahead 50 meters or so. Most flashes should be fine, you will try to diffuse light by either bouncing it off the wall or/and celling or by using diffusers. Some flash guns recharge faster than the others, but is not critical to have fastest one, it obviously have some advantages. All Flashes use AA (LR6) batteries, so you will have to get yourself some fast battery charger, and high capacity Ni-MH, preferably two sets, or one lithium (non rechargeable) as back up. Lithium batteries last for quite a while compared to alkaline, but rechargeable are ones to go for.
Summarizing you can get any flash as long as it tilts and swivels, get some rechargeable batteries with it and some sort of light diffuser.

What else?
As you have your core kit ready to go, you just need memory cards. Usually any will do, but if you are shooting RAW (if you need to) try to get some faster type card, class 6 on DS/SDHC/SDXC or 30MB/s CF. Brand of choice is SanDisk. Reliable and well worth the money. Essential, for me, is filter on my lens. Could be UV, if you must you can use skylight filter although it add some pinkish colour cast (but there is no much problem with it since cameras have white balance control) or just simple clear protector. You may conceder star filters as they give some nice effects on the bright hotspots, but use them with measure, it's main use is protection. Is nothing worst than pushing lens against some rough surface, corner, glass, anything that could possibly damage or scratch it, or just against fingers and other body parts which may get in contact with it. If you have some basic lens, like kit 18-55 you can put anything on it, it does not really matter. But if you are using expensive lens, you better consider something good, what is the point of attaching cheap plastic-like filter in front of your precious top end lens? Brand of choice is Hoya, especially its HD series. Toughest filter you can find around, it stays in one piece where other get shattered. Just in case of extreme situation. As you have been in to clubs yourself, probably you know there is high risk of getting dirty, wet, pushed in to something or someone. Your camera will wear out on outside, and you will see all that dirt in your camera corners. You may consider something like Camera Armor, which is basically rubberized wrap that goes around your camera and protects it from bumps, scratches and dirt. Really handy in crowded clubs. For your flash, you will need some diffuser, many to choose from, but most of them are omni-directional, and we need something that gives light to the front rather to the back (in most situations), that could be easily fixed, so get anything you feel is good. I am using sto-fen diffuser, but if i had a choice, i would choose something with slightly larger/wider diffusing area. And the last thing is the bag. Avoid big shoulder bags, as they are not handy when comes to squeezing trough narrow hall, try to get something like small sling back pack, that works best. It just need to fit your camera and lens, flash with diffuser, batteries, spare batteries, memory card and spare memory card (never forget those, is very frustrating when you forget your main card, and there is nothing else in your back pack, you walked all way down for nothing).
Summarizing you also need filter, spare batteries and cards, practical bag, and maybe Camera Armor.




Part 2
Practice
How to approach?
Generally you will meet many different people, so there is no universal way to speak to them, but eventually you will find out how to talk to these people, you just need to keep in mind that they are out because they want some fun. Try to be nice, keep in mind that is your job, but don't be too serious, it is bad time to be serious. Have fun with what you are doing, after all is the photography you love. When talking to somebody try to talk like to your friend, assume that you know each other already. Ask if the party is good, if they are having fun or just tell them to get together so you can take a shot. Quite often you will be asked by some people to take pictures, and usually people nearby ask you as well, if they see you taking photos. You may end up in situation that people will be almost queuing to you to take some shots. Some will be rushing you, try to pay attention to order they have asked you first. If someone annoys you, because is abusive or so, just try to ignore them, they eventually go away. Usually drunk people will want to get picture of them doing something stupid. Just refuse and ignore them, they will quickly forget about everything anyway. If you see someone taking photo of friends, try to get the same photo as well! It is really good opportunity to get really nice fun shots. In general, if you see something interesting, try to take shot. Shoot first, then ask questions (sound familiar? It work here).
Summarizing try to approach people in friendly manner, they are there for fun, so make taking pictures fun for them, as well as for your self.

How to set the camera?
That is one of most difficult task. I will try to make it easy. At this point we will have to assume there are two types of light. Ambient and flash, and them two will be controlled independently. Let say, there are four type of photographs you can get in night club, but there is only one you actually want to achieve; occasionally you will get other result out of other three.

First one - you will get underexposed background as well as underexposed foreground/subject (if we can say that, there is no way you could get proper exposure in club, in terms of camera auto metering or trying to achieve perfect histogram).

Second one - background exposed correctly (let say it is as for the night club) and foreground underexposed (this happens quite often if subject if wearing white or bright cloths, you will learn how to sort that out later)

Third one - background under exposed but foreground exposed properly. That sometimes might be the only option, but id does not look much better than taken with compact camera,.

Fourth one - the one you will like to get most of the time, nicely exposed background and properly lit foreground.
Good shot!

Because clubs have many lights which move constantly around, you will not rely on cameras metering (at least not as much) you dial setting of choice ought be M (manual). It may seem complicated when you are entering photography world, but sooner you get used to it, then better. Remember as i mentioned usable ISO on camera earlier? Usable means high but with still decent quality. I am using ISO 800 to 1600 most of the time. In well lit club you use something like 800 but if the club is rather dark, use higher ISO, to get as much light out of the background as possible.
One of the most important things about getting photos with nice colourful background is how you position yourself against subject. They don't care, but if you have chance, ask them to move to other spot, or you go around to get some fancy lights in the background. This is very important and regardless of the camera settings it will add impact to your photographs.
If there is not much light available, there is not much you can do, really. You can't add much light in the background, so try to reposition, or if that is not possible, try to move close to the wall - it is better to have some colour or patterns as a background than plain black space.
It's tricky to set correct exposure time. Let's all assume we will be using aperture of f/4 most of the time. Good overall ISO is 800, and it also help to extend flash battery life, because flash does not have to output as much power to get same result as with ISO 100. From my experience i would say exposure time around 1/10 of second is good to start with. This is where many people fail, because using P, Av mode, or full auto, takes the picture with relatively fast shutter speed, in auto or P camera set time to 1/60 automatically which is inappropriate. On Tv, however, we can select desired exposure time, and camera will adjust aperture to existing light condition, that usually means maximum aperture of particular lens. That is why most reasonable is to set it to M. Be careful with lenses with variable aperture, ie. f/3.5-5.6 because if you set aperture f/3.5 as soon as you zoom in camera will automatically change it to lowest opening for that zoom position, which is, on maximum zoom, f/5.6 in this case, so to avoid camera messing up your aperture setting (either in M or Av modes) always set your working aperture the same as highest number of minimum aperture (which is written on the front of the lens).
Let assume your settings look like this: f/4 1/10th ISO 800.
Now we need to set few more parameters, another important one is WB (white balance). Because we will be using flash, set it to flash position, and avoid Auto WB because all those lights in club will make it go crazy. There is only one exception to this, when you may want to change it to Auto WB for a while, when you in bar area of the club where strong ambient lights shines on to the subjects and there is no way to move around, so to get some lights in the background (if any) you want fairly long exposure time, but because object is lit, too long will blur its face, so you have to find sweet spot, but also it will mix with flash light and the colour temperature will not be the same light for flash itself anymore, so if you will leave it on flash WB you will get bad orange colour cast which might be unacceptable.. Solution is to increase shutter speed but only as long as we do not loose to many background details. Basically alter shutter speed if ambient light will mix up with flash light too much.
By increasing or decreasing exposure time, you control ambient light, which done in right way, is the light in the background, not directly shining on to the subject. Ideally there will be very little ambient light in foreground, and much more in the background. that way you can create very pleasant results. Notice, that slightly longer times usually gives more attractive results. because lights move during that split of second filling more of the frame.

How to set the flash?
Now you should know more or less how to control amount of light in background by increasing or decreasing exposure time, depending on how many and how intensive these lights are. It is worth trying few shots to work out best times for particular venue.
Now i show you how to use flash with it. It is not as easy if there is not much automation involved. It's rather tricky to set flash manually and adjust its value as easy as with exposure time, so we will use old good ETTL II (or TTL for other cameras) to work out how much flash power do we need. Most of the cameras can measure frame and get reading in at least 3 ways:
Evaluative, spot or average. We will not use evaluative simply because it analyze entire frame, and because camera see dark background it will try to compensate with stronger flash than required. Spot, on the other hand is sometimes problematic when someone wears dark clothes, it will overexpose as well. We set our camera to average (center-weighted) or some cameras feature central spot (which is like spot, but of larger area which should be enough) that is good option too. Great. Now our camera get light reading from area of our interest - our subject, not the background.
As i mentioned earlier, camera can get confused, and it might under or over expose our subject, event if we get our settings right. It is because different materials have different reflection index, and camera will get confused. Most annoying you may encounter is person wearing something white, that is dominant in photograph. Most of the time camera will read it wrong and underexpose is. That is why you need to know Flash Exposure Compensation option on your camera, because you will use it almost as often as exposure time. Simply, if you see person wearing white shirt, just push it that flash will be stronger. Each camera is different in this matter so you need to try few times. For example, my 40D requires tfrom me constantly -1/3 because on 0 pictures are bit overexposed, but 5dmk2 need +1/3 or 2/3 because it is just to dark. Practice it.
Now you know how to adjust background to your needs, and how (in theory) flash need to be set. There are three more things you need to know about your flash - how to position it, which mode it should use and how to focus. Positioning greatly depends on type of diffuser you have, but generally accept that if there is white wall or celling right next to you or behind, you can rise head almost vertically, but if there is no ceiling because its big club with high ceiling, or it is black or dark coloured, then set it to 45 degrees forward. As mentioned earlier most of the diffusers are omni-directional that means they will send some light behind you as well as to the sides, but unless you have wall close to you behind it is just waste of power in vast club space. If you have white reflector card in your flash you may want to keep it extended or even bed it and cover with diffuser that it will bounce light forward.
Flash can operate in 3 different modes:
Normal, High speed, and slow sync. Most of the time, because we will photograph with long exposure times, we would like to
And focusing, which is as important as everything else, it is done pretty much automatically, thanks to build in flash AF assist beam, which as the name implies will transmit beam of light to support focusing system. Now you need to be aware of which focusing point to use. On large groups of people you can use auto selection, which pick focus which repeats most out of all points available, but sometimes you may want to change it to central point, for accurate focusing, ie. when there is to much background visible and camera tend to focus on the background. You select central point, then focus on object you want, if it is not exactly in the center, you can tilt camera a little bit, focus on ie. face and then rearrange frame and shoot. Because its dark, try to use central point as it is more sensitive than the others because its cross focus sensor (camera dependent).
And that is about it, mastering these settings, or rather balancing them correctly shall give you very interesting results. Every place is different, but try to start with your preferred settings and adjust them accordingly.

What else?
Over the time i have developed some variations to schemes show above. If you have custom settings (C1,2,3) on your dial, assign most used settings to them, that is very handy. Also, because we lack shallow depth of field sometimes (however sometimes it is not desired) there is something we could add. During the exposure, which is as we previously stated around 1/10, we can move camera, but that usually causes unwanted blur. Just make it wanted by knowing how to move your camera. One of the best tricks is to rotate camera slightly during the exposure, along the lens axis. This shall produce pleasant blur which add some impact to pictures. It is commonly called radial blur.
Other option is to zoom in or out (but zooming out does give nicer results) during the exposure. For that you would like a bit longer time. Trick is to zoom out first, focus and keep it locked (shutter pressed half way) and then zoom in. Then press the shutter button completely and zoom out to the end. That way you have created zoom blur effect. Now there are two important things about it. First, as you may realize, picture will be over exposed. Its because you zoom on to darker (usually) part of the pictures, and camera tries to compensate that by increasing flash power. You just simply need to reduce it's power by -2/3 stops. Job done. And another thing is to get some lights in background that can actually blur during zooming out. Also try to avoid lights right in the middle, just in between two people, as they will cover the faces as you will zoom out.
Another thing is to add some creative filters like star filter. That works great on spot lights, and then you can experiment with rotating your camera and zooming in or out.

Check out clubbing photo gallery for some examples and inspirations!
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I hope that guide will help to start you or teach you something new.
I wrote it, because when i was starting, i couldn't find anything good enough on clubbing photography, and as looked
now, there is still not much information on it. I believe it may become handy for some. in future.

If you have extra questions please let me know. And leave comments and suggestions if you liked it!
Rafal

 

[Paul Ron]

Alot of great sugestions here.