the dumontster

This was my first attempt to shoot a "nightlife-esque" event. I am new to indoor photography but trying to get acquainted with nightlife. This was a rock concert in a club scene.
Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/gp/11453848@N07/thg234

My equipment:
D80
Tamron 17-50 f/2.8
Nikon 80-200 f/2.8
Speedlight SB-600 w/ diffuser pointed at 45 degrees forward
Batteries were fully charged; both camera and flash.
Handheld entire evening

I was shooting: ISO 400, 1/60 shutter, f/2.8, auto white balance, flash was set to TTL-BL. The straight on shots were from the 80-200 and the shots from stage left and right were with the 17-50.

I had to post-process every photo and increase the exposure as well as brightness. I also dialed down the saturation to normalize the skin tones b/c the background lighting made everything orange/red. I am looking for advice on how to perfect the settings and I hope the photos provide enough information to describe the environment.

I am happy with the final photos, but I would like to take better photos so I can minimize the post processing.

Should I take off the diffuser? More ISO? Stop down? Faster shutter? Better location? Point flash forward, instead of angled up?

Basically, how do I get my shots to look like F1-Fanatic's in his latest post: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=517061!!!!!!!

F1-Fanatic

Cough... You read his post.. Cough.... or you just come right to the horses mouth

1) Set flash to manual (Canon's metering system SUCKS)
2) Keep in mind that aperture controls flash power not shutter speed
3) Moreover shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light
4) Flash is only to stop action and not expose your target

Hope this helps


P.S. In looking at your shots, keep in mind that if you see harsh shadows, it's because your flash is too strong, or.........??????? Your aperture is too big. See, when you let the camera decide what to do w/ exposure or with flash power, you are toast. The Canon system is crap in this regards because Canon doesn't make their own flashes and while in theory the Camera's metering system and the flash units processor talk to each other, in reality they fight more than they talk. So take control of things and employ a technique which is referred to as "dragging the shutter" and use just enough flash to stop the action and a long enough shutter speed (usually pretty slow) to expose the ambient light

iLuveketchup

Your post is really confusing me.

F1-Fanatic

Aperture controls flash exposure because the shutter speed isn't faster than light. The variables that you mentioned definitely play into this, but if you needed to cut light coming from the flash, you have two options, cut power (manually) or mechanically with the aperture

Shutter speed controls ambient light as you slow the shutter speed down more gets exposed. Think of a stage with different colored lights. If you use a powerful flash, the singer will be blown out, or at best properly exposed with a completely black background looking as if they were in space... Neither is what you would see if you were there, nor what the lighting director wants you to see. By dragging the shutter speed (slowing it down) you can expose the ambient (stage) lighting.

Combine the two and you get a musician who is in focus (stop action), and properly exposed, in addition to having stage lighting exposed as well

Kremlin

Very educational, thanks!

the dumontster

This is great! Thank you F1 for properly "exposing" your technique so that I could understand all the cameras variables.

So flash is not for exposure, but for solely freezing the action, while shutter/aperture are still responsible for proper exposure. Very very cool!

Thanks!

F1-Fanatic

In this context it's more about freezing the action than anything else. You then play a balancing act with the aperture to get exposure right on your main subject, then play with the shutter speed for properly exposing the ambient lighting.

Glad I was able to help

vvs

Yeah, I read the other post and was playing around in the house. I like this explanation very helpful.

I plan to use some of this over the weekend.