Problem with lighting: outdoor at night

[hayga]

Hello

Me and my friend will be shooting in a very unique scenario I shall say. we will be shooting at night outside a church, this church has leds all over that change color, this will be the perfect setting for what we have in mind. This place is not too dark, yet I wish to light up my model a bit better and I was wondering how could I achieve that, since I'm pretty sure we don't have access to an electricity source.

Our camera is a canon t2i and we have a not so great actually extra flash input on it, we also have a medium soft box and a reflector, wondering if some of them could be of any help?

I appreciate any help in how to light up the model better

thanks!

 

[tirediron]

Moving to the Lighting Forum.

 

[tirediron]

It's VERY difficult to give much useful advice without seeing the venue, however since I'm assuming you want to use the LEDs for their colour and just add a touch of flash with your on-camera speedlight, you can either fire the flash into the speedlight and use some black card to flag the light where you want it, use a bare speedlight and make a snoot out of a piece of paper/card-stock, or, fire the flash backward into the reflector and use that.

 

[Village Idiot]

Flash off camera with trigger.

 

[bratkinson]

I'd definitely try going flash-less to get the best effects from the colored lights. Obviously, any flash would wash out some of the color. Perhaps having the colored lights directly in front of and towards the model, and you on the backside of the light(s) would produce some acceptable results.

Since you are having a model, hopefully they can stay still-enough for some longer exposures such as 1/30 or so that will likely be needed, even with a fast lens and reasonable ISO. Note that at that shutter speed, I'd be taking 5-10 shots of each pose, as insurance against subject blurring. You'll also need a tripod and/or monopod for those shutter speeds.

But I'd also want to 'hedge my bet' a bit and perhaps use the on-camera flash only as a fill-flash to brighten up the subject without washing out the colored lights. When using the on-camera flash, be sure to have something to soften it a bit...even a piece of tissue works better than nothing.

 

[Village Idiot]

I'd definitely try going flash-less to get the best effects from the colored lights. Obviously, any flash would wash out some of the color.

Obviously not. That why you position the flash at the power with the gels and/or modifiers you want to acheive the look you're going for. Flash will wash out the color...if you don't know what you're doing.

 

[greybeard]

Flash with slow sync. Take several shots bracketing the flash output.

 

[tirediron]

I'd definitely try going flash-less to get the best effects from the colored lights. Obviously, any flash would wash out some of the color.

Obviously not. That why you position the flash at the power with the gels and/or modifiers you want to acheive the look you're going for. Flash will wash out the color...if you don't know what you're doing.

This. Exactly! The use of flash in photography is like the application of a woman's make-up; a lot of knowledge, skill and effort go toward making something where it looks like nothing at all was done. If your flash is washing things out, REDUCE THE POWER!

 

[andrewkurcan]

If your flash is washing things out, REDUCE THE POWER!

YES.