Night Crowd Photo

[stevanity]

I recently attended some crusades and Christian meetings. And took some pictures of the crowd in India
Most of them are in the night and under Halogen Lights.
Im facing a problem. The people in the front rows are properly exposed and the ones in the back are very dark even though i can see them well li through my naked eye.

My equipment:
Nikon D80 [18-135mm Nikkor DX AF-S] with SB 600 Nikon Speed light.

Please help me. Ill post some pics.

 

[stevanity]

Check this photo. The entire auditorium was well lit with Halogen Bulbs. But still I cant get proper exposure for the back side of the crowd. I have intentionally blurred front crowd.

Shooting Details:

Nikon D80 with 18-135 mm Nikkor Zoom.
SB 600 Flash operating in TTL mode.

1/60 @f/4.5 ISO 200

Exposure Bias +1.3 step.

Increasing ISO and Exposure comp, washed out the front area of the crowd. Please help me!

 

[vtf]

Your flash couldn't reach those in back.

 

[stevanity]

SO what are your suggestions?
Turn the flash off and use a tripod?

 

[vtf]

SO what are your suggestions?
Turn the flash off and use a tripod?

The Halogen lighting used is not adequate for photography. The flash you used has a limited distance. If you can set up flash units throughout the crowd that could help or either crank up your iso (will introduce noise), Open the aperture (short dof, won't see those in back) or slow the shutter (everything will be a blur). I would search the threads for concert photography, the issues would be similar. Regardless, you will have difficulty getting those in back lit without additional lighting.

 

[stevanity]

I see. Thank you. Im gonna try raising the ISO. But then the front crowd become overexposed.
Ok, ill try to get some additional flash units.

 

[Restomage]

Lighting that crowd evenly will be extremely difficult and I'll go as far as to say impossible with just a camera-mounted flash. The only way you can do it is to either use ambient light and bump up the iso and slow the shutter, or have remote flashes somewhere further into the crowd. Based off of your shooting data, ISO 200 will not do the job, with a higher iso you might have had better results. Don't be afraid to bump up the ISO to 1000 if you need to, you can always get rid of it in photoshop.

 

[stevanity]

Thank you very much. Ill try to shoot with higher ISO hereafter. Thanks guyz! ure the best!

 

[Geaux]

You could always tie up some flashes above or to the side of the crowd elsewhere. I've seen it done in basketball to light the whole crowd in a highschool gym.

 

[KmH]

The camera doesn't work like your eye does: http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf.

 

[Ginu]

Well this could be experimental but it might work, pick up another one or two SB600 and use them in slave mode hanging from the roof with flash diffusers and pick up a SB800 to use on the D80 as a flash and controller.

When you fire your camera, the other 2 or 3 flashes with diffusers will flash illuminating the back of the room. Again this is a little bit of a experimental idea, but I think it should work.

Tripod idea will not work very well as your subjects will move over the time of exposure. You could record video with a camcorder and see how that turns out.