Birthday cake candle shots...kind of depends..the "safest" way to shoot them is with very subtle bounce flash in a manual exposure mode. Why? Well, in many TTL systems, the candle flames are read by the exposure systems as being point-source lights, often 12 to 16 stops brighter than the background, which is a very tough exposure calculation; "some" cameras will at "some" focal lengths interpret this candles as too small to be of significance, and will slow the exposure down quite a bit at indoor light levels. In Av mode, at f/5.6, if the room is dim, the camera could easily decide to slow the exposure at ISO 400 down to as slow as 1/2 second.
If the shot is framed tightly, and the candles are pretty bright, "some" exposure systems will evaluate that scene as being a bright-light scene, and in Av mode will give a very,very fast shutter speed, and will drastically under-expose the background parts of the scene. After all, a cluster of 15 candles in a tight circle in a small frame area is pretty bright. So, if the Av or Aperture Value you pick is f/5.6, the candles-lighted shot on a teenager's birthday cake could be 1/60 second at ISO 400, which will be fine, until the candles blow out....then the exposure will change dramatically.
So, yeah....birthday cake candles....I came by the above information talking to a fellow who used to run a small photo processing store. he and I talked for maybe 20 minutes about how people's pictures came out in birthday cake situations. he used to see entire rolls, coming out of the processor,and al;so dealt with a LOT of reprint and enlargement orders on shots that were critcially important to his customers, but which needed serious re-print exposure corrections. He told me you could see what happened with a lot of automatic metering scenarios,across all brands of cameras--exposures were sometimes all over the place, depending on the "weight" the candles were assigned, OR things were basically good with the candles lighted, but as soon as they were blown out, the exposures would tend toward dark and under-exposed OR alternately, very yellowish and over-exposed with a long exposure + flash pop with a ghost image and blurs. All in all, not a very good batting percentage for auto-exposure systems and Av or Tv mode.
I asked him what the BEST way was to shoot birthday cake candle situations,and he told me: manual exposure, manual flash, elevated ISO so the camera can keep up with the flash. Flash at kind of a lower power setting. This gave a balanced, overall look where the before shots looked good, and the candles looked lit but the area around was also lighted by the flash, and when the candles were blown out, the flash was still providing the basic "baseline exposure". In other words, this situation used to be a make-or-break with a film camera.
Like Kundalini says, a bit of practice makes sense. My suggestion is similar: bounced flash or off-camera flash, sufficient to provide a good, solid exposure that looks natural. Controlled by setting the camera to Manual mode, picking a decent shutter speed and f/stop, setting that speed, and then setting the flash power to a repeatable output level. Keep everything the same, so that the "test" pictures look good. Have 'em light the candles, and start shooting. Make sure the batteries are fresh,and at close distances, the flash recycle time ought to keep up with the firing rate of the camera for the first 3 or 4 frame, no problem, especially if you set the ISO to 400 or so.
In all honesty, shooting ANYTHING with flash in Tv mode is very,very risky--you never know what you will get, and flash pictures and Tv (time Value or as Nikon and Pentax call it, SHutter SPeed Priority) is typically very,very un-desirable as a general rule. Similarly, shooting flash pictures in A or Av mode is also kind of risky---the camera will pick the shutter speed, and it will often go with a very slow shutter speed indoors, like 1/15 to 1/6 second, leading to ugly,blurred images on the parts that are not lighted by the flash. Flash is one of the best places to set the camera up in M mode. It truly is.
Use your 50mm instead of your kit lens in low light conditions. If your stuck with your kit lens only, bump up the iso and balance clarity with the noise produced.
, get someone to assist you. Pop up the flash and put a bounce in front of it. You can use just about anything.... a white business card, folded aluminum foil, a CD case. Have your assistant use a reflector to direct the bounced light onto the subject. The reflector can be anything as well... a white piece of foam core, white poster board, a piece of notebook paper. For a more contrasty light, use something that will reflect more such as a large baking sheet, your car's sunshade, or a mirror. The larger your reflector, the more it will fill the scene. Also, the larger the light source, the softer the light. So if you want to concentrate the light for a child blowing out the candle, you could use a smaller reflector and the background will be darker.
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