Nightlife

[camerainmyhand]

Nightlife

 

[jpenna]

Oo... I like that effect -- how did you get it?

 

[Rogan]

are you doing rear curtain sync?

so that ur dragging all the light around then freezing the subject for focused people?

 

[Big Mike]

You need to realize that flash photography is actually two exposures in one. The first is the the ambient exposure (the light around you) and the second is the flash exposure.

The ambient exposure is controlled by the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO. The flash exposure is controlled by the aperture, the power of the flash and the ISO (not the shutter speed).

With that flash and camera, you have electronic TTL metering...so the flash is pretty much automatic and will set it's exposure to the aperture that you have chosen.

So in this case, you could set the aperture to F4 or F8 etc. You may need to play with the FEC to tune the flash exposure. Then, you can adjust the shutter speed and ISO to control the ambient exposure. (camera in manual mode).
To get blurry background lights, you will want to use a slower shutter speed. I was doing a lot of this, just last weekend...and I had what I wanted with shutter speeds from about one second to 1/10 of a second.

The flash will fire very quickly, and will freeze what it sees. So you can get sharp photos of people with some blur around them.

One thing to watch for, is how much ambient light is on the people. If there is a lot of ambient light on your subject, then you will get blur. This is sometimes good, sometimes not. If they don't have much ambient, then the flash image will be more prominent and they will be sharper.

If you are shooting a moving/dancing subject...you need to watch for bright areas behind the subject...because those areas will get really bright with longer exposures and could stand out more than your subject. I had this problem the other night when trying to shoot people dancing at the wedding...the bar area was very bright and would cause big bright spots in the images, sometimes covering the faces of the people I was shooting.

The biggest thing for this type of thing is experimenting and seeing what works.

Oh ya...put the flash in rear/2nd curtain sync.

 

[RacePhoto]

Something else you might want to try is manual flash, in your left hand, camera in your right hand.

Pretty much the same as what Mike said, but a different way of saying it.

ISO is a constant in one photo, so you aren't going to change it.

Your first exposure is the camera, which you want slightly under exposed, for the background and the lights. If the shutter speed is too long, you'll get too much light and probably more blur than you want.

When you get that adjusted, your flash will always be the second exposure and the sharp image.

If you have the flash in the auto mode and it reads the light, no TTL, then you can get some measured results. Otherwise you can go manual and the light will always be the same, so you vary your distance from the subject or put a diffuser on it, to control the brightness.

What I'm trying to get at, is your first part of the exposure is the camera and available light, the second part of the same exposure is the momentary flash, which will be lighting your subject.

The way you are doing it and what Mike suggested, your camera is triggering the natural light exposure and the flash at pretty much the same time, and then if the shutter is open longer, you get the lighting effects. (after the flash) But the exposure of the subject is the flash. Anything else is background. The farther away it is, the less the flash, so that gave you the dark background with the lights being the only part that was recorded.

Digital is almost free. Great for experimenting. What you need to do is get some controlled situation with some friends and take some pictures with different settings, and TAKE NOTES. Vary the time, and vary your distance from the subjects, you'll fine that the further away the walls, the better separation you'll get, because they will be darker.