What settings

[chloew]

Originally Posted by Russell

Sorry about the weirding out part but I am glad you like the shots!

Here's another, not so weird, example.

Great balance of flash and ambient on that last one, Russell. Also the seond Sandhill picture is excellent. I'm not a big fan of the blur echo on the first one.

[mramos]

Originally Posted by sbp

I generally have problem taking pictures at dance time.
This one was taken on M -F5.6 - 1/16.
I think if I have bump up shutter speed to 1/20 then I could have avoide the motion. But my question is is there a easy way to find out that this is going to happen because you are in party and has no time.

Dance time in a reception, I usually start at f4 1/30 to 1/40. I will adjust my flash compensation if a need more or less light on my subject. This usually stops the action for me, at the same time giving me ambient light for the background. I forgot to add that I bounce my flash off the ceiling as much as possible, or any wall if the ceiling is too high.

[markfh]

Or you might try using some inexpensive remote flash triggered flash units on inexpemsive stands to get more light overall. That'd allow you to use a higher shutter speed. Takes a bit of set up practice but can work out pretty good.

[sbp]

Everyone good info. I got now confuse on another thing.

Say my lense is F3.5-5.6. Now have F11 setup in camara but lense is not able to use this, is it? But looks like it is working. How is it possible?

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

OK the F3.5-5.6 indicates that you have a zoom lens and over the range of the zoom the fastest, widest that the lense will open up, varies from F3.5 up to F5.6. So when the lens is at say 28mm setting you can open up to a 3.5 but when the lens is zoomed to 200mm setting the fastest it is will be a F5.6. If you look at the barrel of the lens it should go up to about F22, i.e. lets in less light than the lower F stop numbers.

That is why you see people talking about Prime lenses that are F2.0 or lower-they allow more light to be captured.is a 400mm F2.8 vs a 400 F5.6
The one has a diameter of just over 6 inches vs 3.5 inches.

[sbp]

that now makes sense.

[sbp]

Thank you friends
I used 160 and 250 shutter speed on last week dance party and most of my pictures are good.

[Champuu]

Great info here for those of use who are learning. Thank you

[engstrom]

Originally Posted by sbp

Thank you friends
I used 160 and 250 shutter speed on last week dance party and most of my pictures are good.

I'm glad we helped. Care to share any of the pictures you took last week?

[sbp]

Here is one that I just quickly converted from raw apply softness and reduce size. I am confident that next time will be better then this.

[Tom]

Picture seems to be backfocused. The hand with the blue bracelets is in focus where the subjects face is not.

[sbp]

you are right but I don't know how to shoot while everyone is moving and there is no or little light. I just used shoot button to take picture because camara was not focusing properly due to darkness.

[Tom]

Manually focus or zone focus.

To Zone focus, switch to manual and pick a spot and focus on it. When the action you want to capture enters your focused zone, snap the shot.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

OK here is an analysis of how you should try to set up and shoot your camera for your situation.

First set the camera at the highest acceptable ASA sensitivity speed-the higher the # the more the noise so you need to figure out what the trade off point in. You need to set up a room at home with about what looks to be the same amount of light and shoot some light colored and darker colored items at different ASA settings (it doesn't matter too much what the exposure speed is becasue you are looking at the noise level of your cameras chip). So then look at these in seperate windows in your monitor and see how sensitive you can go-400ASA or higher would be better than 100ASA if it doesn't get to noisy.

Then when you shoot the next dance you need to use the camera in manual focus mode so you don't get the problem and then shoot at around 160th or 250th of a second-if you can use 160th it would be better since that will allow you a higher F stop say 5.6 vs 4.5 which would give you a larger depth of field that is in focus. You would rather have the scene in focus from 12-16ft in focus with the sharpest at 14 ft than have it at 40ft to infinity since at 40ft you would probably be just catching the back wall and maybe a foot in front of it. So with the 12-16 ft example items closer than 12 ft would be slightly out of focus with it becoming sharp at 14 ft and then bluring out in the distance.

In the example that you just showed the gentlemans hand with the yellow band would be out of focus, the womans back may be on the edge of sharpness-the man's face sharply in focus while the womans hands behind him going out of focus with the back wall blurred since the subject of the shot is the man dancing. It will take a bit of time but you will get it.

The lower the f stop say 4.5 vs 5.6 will give you a more narrow distance that will be in focus, and f 22 or 32 would give you most of the scene in focus and if you had a large format camera with a lense that stops down to f128 you would have almost everything that you see in sharp focus but then you would need a lot of light in the scene but that is the reason that some of those outdoor scenery shots are so sharp and in detail.

I hope this helps you understand a bit more about your shooting situation.

[sbp]

Great, Last weekend I took everything manually. some was great some was bad. I know where I have to change and what.
Only problem was with this dance thing.
I think I am getting more and more idea from your long informative post.

I know next time will be exact same situation. But before that I am going to try some live thing i.e end of this month.
I guess f5.6 or higher, speed 200 or 250. Then I will place camara on higher with my flash power little more. Keep this thread in your list pretty please. I will post again in month.

Thanks you for taking time and explaining me.