 BetterPhoto Member |
Setting flash for at night outside
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Jon Close |
Looks like you're too far away for flash to be effective. Shutter speed is too slow for hand-held shooting. What exposure mode, shutter, aperture, and ISO? Most you can do is crank up the ISO and use a fast lens (f/2.8 or wider aperture).
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W. |
"Most you can do is crank up the ISO and use a fast lens (f/2.8 or wider aperture)" (Jon C.) Yep. Also, that photo was 'panned' of sorts. The calf is the least out-of-focus, so you seem to have been tracking it. The cow dudes and dudettes in the BG all seem to appear as ghost triplets. As if you jerked while panning. Try a tripod.
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Jon Close |
Interesting comment about the people in the background appearing as "ghost triplets." I could be wrong, but I don't think it's the result of any jerky motions of the camera. I think it might be due to the artificial lights which actually flicker with the electrical current at 60 cycles per second. Panning with a slow shutter speed will capture multiple images of the stationary background in a strobe effect. f/2.8 zooms are very expensive, but you can get some short to medium tele lenses for not too much. EF 50 f/1.8 II is just $80, EF 50 f/1.4 USM is $325, EF 85 f/1.8 USM is $355, EF 100 f/2 USM is $410. EF 135 f/2L USM is very expensive, but the often overlooked EF 135 f/2.8 SF is sharp and only $295. Plus it has a Soft Focus feature for dreamy portraits or landscapes.
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Alan N. Marcus |
On flash at a sporting event and similar: Light from our camera's flash falls off with distance, more than you would think! Light from a point source camera mounted flash severely weakens with distance, following a law in physics “The Law of the Inverse Square. Just how quickly it weakens is difficult to convey but I will try. Say your flash outputs 1000 units of light energy measured 1 foot ahead of the camera. We can calculate the brilliance delivered at the 2 foot mark thus 2 x 2 = 4 (square of the distance) written 4/1. Now accordingly, we invert this value writing it as 1/4. This math conveys to us that if we double the distance, light falls too one quarter (1/4) of its original value. That translates to 250 units light energy at the 2 foot mark. Now let’s calculate the brilliance at the 4 foot mark. 4 x 4 =16 written 16/1, now we invert 1/16 translated; the light energy at the 4 foot position fades to one sixteenth strength = 62 1/2 units. What follows is a table based on 1000 units measured at the 1 foot mark. Also let’s say the correct exposure (aperture) setting was f/32 at the 1 foot mark. Remember, each f/number 1 - 1.4 – 2 – 2.8 – 4 – 5.6 – 8 -11 -16 – 22 - 32 corresponds to s a 2x change at the film/chip plane. 1 ft. = 1/1 = 1000 units ~ aperture = f/32 What I am trying to inform is: Flash falls off extremely rapidly with distance. After perhaps 16 feet, unless the flash is exceptionally powerful it is useless. When you see flashes going off in the stands at a sports event, you should be aware that flash photography s at distance is doomed to failure. For success, turn to available light photography supplemented by high ISO and large aperture lenses. Alan Marcus (marginal technical gobbledygook)
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