Indoor flash question.

[cailinp]

I have a dinner tonight and am going to be taking some photos for practice. It is at a restaurant with very yellowish lighting. There will be no natural or day light coming in. My problem is that I don't want to use flash but I'm not educated enough to know exactly which settings to tweak in order to produce a good photo at a fast rate with no flash. I am shooting with a Nikon btw. Any info or suggestions would be great.

 

[Noonz]

I have a dinner tonight and am going to be taking some photos for practice. It is at a restaurant with very yellowish lighting. There will be no natural or day light coming in. My problem is that I don't want to use flash but I'm not educated enough to know exactly which settings to tweak in order to produce a good photo at a fast rate with no flash. I am shooting with a Nikon btw. Any info or suggestions would be great.

Your best bet is probably to boost up your ISO and have an open aperture (f3.4) adjust your shutter speed to about 1/60 and you should be okay. If you're shooting in Raw you will be able to adjust the white balance in PP later, but dont count on it. If you are able to adjust the white balance to suit the setting right then and there, experiment with it.. shouldn't take too much of your time.

Hope that helps

 

[tsaraleksi]

What kind of flash are you using? If you have a hotshoe flash that can be bounced, that would be ideal because it lets you make all the light, and make it look pretty nice. If not, then Noonz's suggestion is pretty spot on.

 

[myfotoguy]

Some restaurants get quite dark. Depending on your equipment and lens, you may be able to get shots without flash, follow Noonz advice and if that still doesn't get the shot your after, start considering flash.

As mentioned by tsaraleksi bouncing the flash is a good idea, as long as the ceilings are not colored, if they are the images can tend to take on the color of the ceilings (or walls).

You could use slow-rear sync to drag the shutter and bring in some of the ambient light to blend with the flash on the subject (to avoid the cave look). The issue here will be the likely warm color of the artificial lighting. That can be adjusted some in post, using layers and selections. But it's better than no photos at all.

This may not be ideal if you don't have the equipment, just another thought:
If you do have a speedlight, and can get some gels for it, you might try using a colored gel (orange for tungsten) and setting the WB on the camera to tungsten (assuming that is the kind of light) to balance the ambient and flash color temperature. This would require a couple test shots to dial in the WB and choose the correct gel for your flash.