Problem with shadows using flash...or...maybe I should switch to Auto!

[bratkinson]

So here I was, happy as a clam 'doing my low light thing', merrily shooting with my 5D mark iii, no flash, at ISO 6400, 1/160, wide open on my 'magic drainpipe' 80-200 f2.8L at a high school choir concert on Friday night. Great results! The choir director really 'engages' her students, first the middle-school choir then the high school choir with various skits that go along with the Christmas music. How she managed to get 4 of the high school boys to done ballet style tu-tus (or whatever those pineapple slice 'skirts' are called) and dance around like ballet dancers is beyond me...I wouldn't have been caught DEAD wearing those 50 years ago! They also came back as Rappin' Jokers and had everybody practically in tears with laughter. Then all of a sudden...FLASH!!!! Just as I pressed the shutter.

Turns out the 'flasher' was the choir directors' hubby with a 7D and an EF-S 18-200 f3.5-5-6 IS lens that just couldn't cut it with the lighting. So he put on his flash and POOF!!! Everything was lit up! That's him with the bald spot in the front row...

I wonder if I had been shooting in "A" it would have handled the flash...

 

[amolitor]

Auto modes won't help here, since it's metering and then exposing! The flash obviously happened later.

Pretty amazing that you caught the flash, though, and kind of a cool result.

 

[Derrel]

Lucky accident! YEAH, it happens sometimes.

 

[Designer]

This reminds me in a way of last year's pre-school Christmas program. I had a speedlight high on a stand set to slave. I was in the choir loft snapping the whole front action. I noticed that whenever someone flashed their cell phone camera it would fire my speedlight (probably blowing out their picture). Chuckles and yucks. I took down the speedlight halfway through.

See, that was before I owned any radio triggers.

 

[480sparky]

Happens a lot to paparazzi and news photographers.

 

[Derrel]

This reminds me in a way of last year's pre-school Christmas program. I had a speedlight high on a stand set to slave. I was in the choir loft snapping the whole front action. I noticed that whenever someone flashed their cell phone camera it would fire my speedlight (probably blowing out their picture). Chuckles and yucks. I took down the speedlight halfway through.

See, that was before I owned any radio triggers.

Reminds me of the story a friend of mine used to tell. One summer he assisted the city's most-expensive and best wedding shooter, a guy who had a bit of a rep as a,well,to put it politely, a "crank". He said that during the pre-wedding formals, he was always instructed to place a single very powerful flash head with a slave, aimed back, at the area where onlookers would be tempted to shoot "over the shoulder" shots that the pro was shooting, in an effort to FLOOD their lenses with a massive overdose of flash.

 

[beachrat]

I read a good story about the late great Dean Collins doing a shoot at an airport that had lights all over the place. All optically slaved.
Supposedly,a Japanese tourist with a camera saw the whole set up and of course had to get a picture of it and fired away. With flash.
Musta scared the **** out of himself.