I tried using my new sigma 530 DG Super indoors at a family function and had lots of trouble, the venu was a small pub just around midday.
All my photos came out dark, I wanted to shoot at f6-8 to get a wide DOF, I tried ADI and TTL but I must have been doing sometime wrong.
If anyone has any tips on shooting groups of people indoors I would like to hear them
here is a sample image.
iso200 f8.0 1/60 18mm
Please note the actual image is much darker for some reason it lightens up posted here. i.e it's so dark the boy at the end of the table jumper is black and so is all the brick work behind hims, looks like his head and hands are floating there with no body
With mine I have taken to setting M mode whatever aperture I want SS around 1/60 maybe a little more or less to control the ambient light contribution and more importantly ISO 400. the flashes fill the frame nicely like that. I can't see the ceiling in your frame but for what you were shooting I might have tried wireless with the flash bounced and same setting as above.
Exposures are metered for an averaged 18% gray. That large white tablecloth in so much of the frame is causing your problems. Try the same scene with a dark blue tablecloth and see what yo get.
thanks all for the advice, the ceiling was , no ceiling , just exposed high pitched roof, with a dark pine clading, no chance of bouncing the flash off it. looks like I have a lot to learn about using flash indoors, my rumpus room at home is around the same size and i had no trouble filling it with the flash. I guess there is a big differance between taken photos of a empty room and a room filled with tables and people
the problem is that the camera is trying to interpret the scene to light it properly. when confronted with a lot of reflecting things it cuts the flash off short. and the low iso made the camera less sensitive to the flash which made things worse. I struggled with this in the worse way in the beginning. now at least when I make the mistakes I can usually determine the cause and correct it.
I was at a restaurant where I know the owners. they wanted me to install security cameras inside and I had my camera with me and my 36AM and 530DG super. The owners asked me to take a few shots for them but the lighting was subdued and there was bright sunshine coming in through the windows. this is one of the shots I took with both flashes triggered wirelessly. this is not cropped and you can see both flashes in the scene. you can't in the cropped version this shot is straight from the camera. It just shows how much light can be obtained from these flashes. even I didn't think this was going to work. but I did a whole set for them and I was pretty impressed that I was able to light it all so well.
I think it's basically a question of composition, you've got not only wide angle but depth as well (all the subjects are not at the same distance, as they must be for direct flash), therefore the camera is faced with a choice of vastly over-expose the foreground in order to expose the distant subjects properly, or do roughly what it did, try to at least expose some of the scene properly and sacrifice the rest.
I estimate the most distant subjects at about 6m, and the foreground at maybe 1m (which is exposed within acceptable exposure parameters), to expose the distant subjects the same amount as the foreground the camera/flash would have to boost the power output roughly four times, imagine what is going to happen too the foreground....ye olde neutron bomb effect....
When faced with such a composition you have a few choices, bring some stands and a couple of flashes (F46,F56 or F58's, whatever, something that can swivel the body in the direction of the camera to pick up the signal from the popup flash, or retreat back as far as you can and zoom in, (the flash head will zoom automatically and gain in power as it does so, but you will still need ISO400 probably), going back compresses the length of the table in relation to the overall distance between the camera and subjects and makes the composition at least more feasable for direct flash, a nifty trick also is (if there is no room to move back very far), manually zoom the flash head yourself, so while the the lens is at 18mm, zoom the flash to 50-80mm, the flash then has ample power to reach the more distant subjects (@ the f8 ISO200 settings), and the peripheral light from the flash will (hopefully) also light the closer subjects on either side...you might have to do a couple of trial zoom settings....
Greg
KevinBarrett wrote:ISO 200 and f/8 is quite ambitious for indoors, even with a flash. I tend to use ISO 640 and f/5.6 indoors, bouncing my F56 off of the ceiling.
With direct flash that flashgun should have the power for this shot. You could do
worse than just set it on half power and see what you get and hope your subjects
don't get blinded too much.
Dusty wrote:Exposures are metered for an averaged 18% gray. That large white tablecloth in so much of the frame is causing your problems. Try the same scene with a dark blue tablecloth and see what yo get.
Dusty
the EXIF shows that the OP use ADI -no 18% gray principals here...
KevinBarrett wrote:ISO 200 and f/8 is quite ambitious for indoors, even with a flash. I tend to use ISO 640 and f/5.6 indoors, bouncing my F56 off of the ceiling.
OP's flash is a GN 40 @ 50mm -good enough for ASA 200 f8 @ 2.5 meters. Of curse, ASA 800 will econimize batteries...
It supposedly supports wireless. If there were no white ceiling or wall for bouncing the flash, using it externally thanks to an assistant or holding it yourself, will give you a better light quality.
In other hand, there is no reason for the flash to underexpose that bad. The Exif doesn't show any exposure compensation (the exposure compensation on my A700 change "by itself", regarding on the day, and i have to keep checking all the time)
Is this the first time you have this kind of issue with this flash? is this the first time you use this flash?
pakodominguez wrote:
In other hand, there is no reason for the flash to underexpose that bad. The Exif doesn't show any exposure compensation (the exposure compensation on my A700 change "by itself", regarding on the day, and i have to keep checking all the time)
Pako, do you happen to have the rear thumbwheel set to adjust the exposure compensation? I had a major problem on the A700 with whatever exposure parameter was being controlled by the rear thumbwheel changing constantly because the camera brushed against my body and turned the thumbwheel. I finally took some black electrician's tape and used it to lock the rear thumbwheel in place, just to avoid the problem.
