Shooting at night and when to use a flash

[padrepaul77]

One of my favorite things to shoot are night shots of the city, or at places like below, the State Fair. I haven't used a flash much at night, preferring a longer shutter speed. I toyed with the lighting settings on my camera, going with a higher flourescent setting and setting it into manual mode.

ISO was at 200 on Sweet Marhta's with the flash; 1/60 exposure; f 3.5
250 on the Malt Shop; f 5.6; 1/13 of a second exposure; max ap of 3.61
Hot Dog Stand with the flash it's ISO 200, f 3.5, 1/60 exposure time
Cotton Candy Stand: ISO 250, f 5.6, 1/30 sec. exposure.

There is some shadowing on the ice cream cone on the malt shop. Other than that, I've found that not using a flash is better to just capture some nice signs in neon...but having ordered the flash for the bag, when would I want to use it when shooting at night? Just when trying to illuminate people? I'm more apt to want a silhouete against a sign rather than people lit up. As you can see in Sweet Marthas, the on-board flash isn't adequate for that in such a large crowd. Fine for up close though. My fav is the Cotton Candy Stand; pretty good color on that one. I'm also still experimenting with the light settings.

I also ordered the 9-18mm lens from Olympus; 100 rebate right now. I love street shots, and think it'll help.

Any advice for this SLR noob will help!

Merci mille fois,
Paul

 

[shortpballer]

I like the Cotton Candy Stand...The 9mm will put things in a completely different perspective. It will distort the .... of things. However I love the way distorted images look

 

[HeY iTs ScOTtY]

the malt stand looks like a hard picture to shoot. it has many different shades of light in the windows and signs.

 

[Dominantly]

Well, for example, if you were shooting a photo with a person in the foreground as your main focus, but wanted the background to still show through (common is a night portrait with a nice bright cityscape behind them), then you would use a longer shutter and a rear-sync curtain.
The shutter opens and captures the light, then before the shutter closes it fires the flash.