Flash photography

ruffdog64

ruffdog64

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I went to an open mic night and took about 70 shots and to be honest overal I was happy with the results but despite the poor lighting conditions some were out of focus, I know for afact my lens was having trouble locking on some of the time ,I was either shooting in program mode mostly and some in manual and wondered if there was anything I could do to improve matters ,my set up was 1d mk2 , tamron 70-300 and jessops flash using ttl set up
 
ruffdog64 said:
I went to an open mic night and took about 70 shots and to be honest overal I was happy with the results but despite the poor lighting conditions some were out of focus, I know for afact my lens was having trouble locking on some of the time ,I was either shooting in program mode mostly and some in manual and wondered if there was anything I could do to improve matters ,my set up was 1d mk2 , tamron 70-300 and jessops flash using ttl set up
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The easiest way would be to get a flash unit that has a focus assist beam to be honest, and I don't think that the Jessops' units do.

Failing that, go for a narrow aperture (if you are using flash) such as f/8 and focus manually.

Tbh for stage performance I prefer ambient light rather than flash.
 
DemiLion said:
The easiest way would be to get a flash unit that has a focus assist beam to be honest, and I don't think that the Jessops' units do.

Failing that, go for a narrow aperture (if you are using flash) such as f/8 and focus manually.

Tbh for stage performance I prefer ambient light rather than flash.
Click to expand...

I did try that for a couple of shots but the light wasn`t really good enough to be sure of a sharp image.
 
I was having a few problems with the quality of my flash shots on my 5D2. Lots of blinkies on the E-TTL mode until I checked the settings and realised I had one of the settings wrong and the zoom was set at 28mm instead of auto. Once I'd set it to auto it was perfect, great exposure and no more blinkies.
 
Open mike? If they were all using the same mike and not moving about much, you could get a fix on the mike, switch to manual focus + manual exposure, and leave it there. As long as you have enough dof ( about 3 feet should do it), you'll be good.

Ambient light is is usually best in clubs (or on indoor stages of any sort, really) but if you have to use flash, try dropping the output. Either switch to manual on the gun, or use your flash exposure compensation. Using a smaller aperture or lower ISO will reduce flash effect (but changing shutter speed won't ). Get some test shots (on the compare, or just on the mike).
 
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