Lighting Help?

[cameracrazymomma]

I am doing a wedding on Oct. 20th. The place where this couple is getting married at has very poor lighting. Its really hard to get a good pic in there. What do you suggest to help get great looking pics?

 

[bethany138]

When you say "very poor lighting" what do you actually mean? Low light, dark ceilings, high ceilings, flourescent light?

If you just have low lighting try some bounced flash. Turn your flash to point at a wall or the cieling and expose as if you didn't have the flash on at all. Say 800-1600 ISO, 100 (or less) shutter, the flash will stop the motion, and F2.8 or close to it. I prefer to point the flash at a wall if possible because this gives nice sidelighting and adds a little contrast and interest to the photo.

Hope that helps!
b

 

[cameracrazymomma]

flourescent light

the room they are getting married in is a commuity center. No natural light comes in this room at all......just flourescent lighting

 

[Big Mike]

Fluorescent lighting...yuk.

You have a couple of options; First, you could set your white balance to the existing light and shoot without flash. The color might come out OK but the light may not be great looking or even enough to get good shutter speeds. If you used flash and tried to balance it with the ambient...you would have color shifts. So you could put a filter/gel over the flash, so that it matches the color of the ambient lights. This might be the best option if you can accuratly match the flash to the lighting.

Another option would be to just set your shutter speed to your max sync speed and shoot with your flash, without a gel. The idea being that you want your flash to over power the ambient light so that your subjects look correct. The fast shutter speed will cut down on the ambient exposure but any background that does show up will be a weird color.

Lastly, you could edit the shots, correcting the color of the parts that need it (not a good option)...or you could convert many or most of them to black and white.