Photography in candle light help!

[Sprjin]

Hello, I'm pretty new to photography. I have recently purchased a Canon D70 with EF-S 18-135 IS STM lense.
I was asked to take a photo of my friend who is going to be proposing to his to be wife in an area lit only by tiki lights. I've attached couple of photos of the location this will take place.
I'd like to have the warm glow of the tiki lights to cast over them while he proposes but don't want the blurriness... nor do i want to use a flash that would end up looking like it was taken by a cellphone.

Could anyone tell me if i could use a flash in this situation without making a the photo look horrible?
Which camera setting should i use? Av? Tv? P? M??
I have access to photoshop and lightroom... so if the photos don't come out the greatest i can edit them. what is the best mode to shoot that will give me the most flexibility in photoshop?? (i will shoot in RAW format)
I know there are ALOT of factors contribute to a great photo... honestly i don't know whether i'm asking the right questions! so any advice would be appreciated!!

 

[TheStunch]

Funny, I just answered a similar question. I would try auto no flash, to familiarize yourself with the camera's behavior in low light, then go to aperture priority (Av I believe) and set the ISO to auto, and the F stop on the lowest # available (sould be 3.5ish on a kit lens). try this out and see what you get. also, get a good tripod, or if nothing else, a good cheap one (like the Manfrotto Compact available at Walmart, or the Amazon Basics cheap tripod, which seems to be good for the $). A tripod is essential for this shoot because stability is the key to razor sharp night shots, as is the lowest working ISO for a given situation, which we can touch on another day, but for now, tripod, tripod, tripod. Also, it appears your focus was off on a couple of these, youtube how to do focus peeking on the Canon 70d. This trick can help you be VERY in focus if you focus manually, or double check focus if using auto focus. I do a whole lot of night photography, and between now and this shoot, I'd advise you to do the same, so you can have some lens time under your belt and get the most out of your rig when the big night comes. I've included my answer to the other, similar question below, check it out. Good luck on your shoot, with some preparation and practice before hand, you'll do fine.

For grins you may also youtube night street photography tips (bearing in mind you'll be shooting moving subjects)

you may also stick it on aperture priority mode, and crank the aperture (f #) into the lower numbers, and play with it there. too low, and the depth of field may surprise you, for better or for worse. also, if your ISO is set to auto, see if it has a selectable range, and make sure the upper range is available, so say 100-6400, or 100-12800 or whatever it is, so that when it's in aperture priority, the camera has the proper range of ISO's to select from (because often times, the camera is quite good at selecting this in general shooting scenarios). that should get you cleared up nicely

I took the image below in a dimly lit restaurant using the same technique using the Canon 50mm 1.8 (plastic fantastic) and it froze the movement pretty well.

but if you'll notice the soft background, the aperture was wide open at f1.8, and while this is generally regarded as a desirable look, it might not be right in certain scenarios so play around with it, i don't recall the ISO setting on it, but I'm almost certain it was set to auto (full range)

also, i like the first 2 pics a great deal, nicely done.

 

[JoeW27 1]

Okay, you said you're new to photography. So forgive me if I assume incorrectly just how "new" you are.

1. You can easily get sharp pictures of the proposal. They just won't be very romantic. And being new to all this, that's your real challenge. Evening looking at videos or articles about night photography may not help a lot b/c much of that material is focusing on "noir" (dark, gritty, lots of contrast kinds of shots--the exact opposite of what you're looking for--which is warm, romantic, beautiful).

2. Be clear that attempting to do what you want to do is a challenging assignment for anyone. If you set up some speed lights and blasted it all with light, you could get a well-lit sharp exposure. But that's not what you want. You want it sharp but using the tiki lights. And you want a warm romantic feel to it all. So you're juggling a lot of variables in a tough environment.

Here are my tips:
1. Play around with the white balance. You need to find a white balance setting that will accurately reflect the setting and create the mood you're looking for. No criticism intended but when I look at the three samples you provided, I can't tell if that's snow or sand or dirt (I'm guessing it's snow but only b/c it looks like people are wearing warm clothing and parkas in the last shot). The people have an orange tint to their skin. That's not going to look very romantic.

2. You'll want to jack up the ISO as much as you can. This will enable you to shoot with better results in low light. Be forewarned--the higher the ISO, the more grain you get so you could end up with really grainy photos.

3. The lens you're talking about has an aperture range of 3.5-5.6. That's a terrible range for shooting at night. That's not intended to be criticism of your equipment, I'm just saying...that's a kit lens that is slow and you want some fast glass. You should look at renting a lens for this situation (or borrowing something). Ideally it should be f2.8 or faster.

If it were up to me, I'd convince my friend to do the proposal during daylight hours (if the tiki lights are lit near sunset or dusk) or I'd have some speed lights with scrims/soft boxes set up. If you use your popup flash, at least the photos will be mostly sharp but the lighting on the faces will be terrible.

 

[480sparky38 37]

I think considering the circumstances, you did fairly well.

The scenes have very very extreme dynamic ranges. From firelight to a night sky. My only 'gripe' is the yellow cast, which can be corrected in post if you had shot in raw.

Don't be afraid to raise the ISO even more.

 

[Buckster]

To keep your subject(s) from being blurred, you'll need to get your shutter speed up to about 1/60 or faster. In order to do that, you'll need to compensate by opening up your aperture to let in as much light as you can without sacrificing the DOF you feel you need, and then cranking the ISO as high as necessary to get that shutter speed.

The wide open aperture will mean less is in focus. The higher ISO means the shots will look noisier (grainy). There are ways to deal with noise in processing later, but they're not perfect.

Those kinds of problems are why a flash gets used for this sort of thing. But that's a whole 'nuther subject. To keep it from looking like a horrible cell phone flash, you'll want to get the flash off camera, and as close to the subjects as possible and make it as big as possible, which means setting it up in an umbrella or softbox, so now you're talking about something that's pretty obvious, which may not work well for a spontaneous surprise proposal, unless you can weave a story about how you just want to learn how to set up a light like that and use it on subjects, them being the test subjects. That means stands and sandbags or clamps and something to clamp it / them to, and so forth.

But even after working all that out, then you've got to learn enough about balancing the flash output and the ambient light in the scene to make it look more natural, which is what you obviously want. That means two things: First the flash power in relation to the ambient light, and second is the flash temperature, which you'll want to match the ambient light (the color that the flame casts on its surroundings, including your subjects), probably using gels.

Put that all together, and it means you're not in any way, shape or form going to want to wing it at the time this goes down. You're going to HAVE to try it out ahead of time, days ahead of time, with just you and your friend, to work it all out, write down all your settings, and then you can repeat it when the time comes.

At this point, you may begin to understand that what you're asking for is no easy thing, and you'd be right.

 

[TCampbell]

I would use a flash with a CTO gel and "drag the shutter".

In english, that means:

(1) there's a colored plastic film over the flash which tints it "orange" (CTO = Color Temperature Orange... but you don't want just any orange. Search for "CTO".). The purpose of the gel is to match the camera's flash to the color of the candle light. Otherwise your flash ends up "white" and the torches end up "orange" and you get wonky results. If you end up trying to decrease how orange the "candle light" is, then the "white light" starts to go "blue" and it looks even worse. By making all light the same color you can now control just how warm you want it all to be by adjusting white balance on the computer (not in camera) after the shots are done. You'll need external flash for this (preferably off camera and REALLY preferably in a diffused shoot-through umbrella or soft-box. I use a Lastolite EZBox.

(2) "drag the shutter" means you run a longer shutter exposure than you'd normally use for flash. Though a flash-sync speed of 1/200th would work for the "flash", it would collect very little of the ambient light. Extending the shutter time to deliberately include more ambient light will help balance the shot.

This creates a properly exposed main subject... with nice ambient lighting (so it's not obvious that you used flash) and matches the color of the light.

 

[dennybeall]

Consider taking some shots to get the scene and the background and then take some softly lit (flash with filter/ bounce with filter??) shots of the couple while he proposes. Then put the shots together in PS.

 

[cynicaster]

That means two things: First the flash power in relation to the ambient light, and second is the flash temperature, which you'll want to match the ambient light (the color that the flame casts on its surroundings, including your subjects), probably using gels.

This is what I was going to suggest--off-camera flash with a CTO gel.

With the amount of setup and gear required to do it, good luck with the element of surprise.