Night Club Shooting

[rwc0920]

So I've been taking my t1i with no attachment flash to the night clubs and have fooled around with it but my pictures always come out either too dark or the flash just overpowers the whole picture. Any tips on a shooting setting I can leave it on so I don't have to keep fiddling with it?

[Sloseph]

Have you got any examples of shots you could post?

as for setting you could leave it on that’s a bit of a tricky one when it comes to night clubs as you have the ever changing lights to combat

one tip I will give you though it stick your shutter speed to bulb and find an nice wide aperture, put your flash on and have some fun with light trails

Your flash will freeze the image then if there are any lasers or best of all if they have a glow stick you will get some fantastic results

If you can post some examples of what you have been getting I will try and help you out a bit more

[OsmosisStudios]

Without an external flash? The on-board flash isn't the greatest solution, and not just for power levels. Even used as a head-on light, it'll produce better light than the little one attached to your camera.

[JectigatingScript]

This is my suggestion:
Use the widest angle and aperture you can*. When I do clubs/raves/other events, I use my 18-55mm kit lens and leave it at 18mm. If you can get an external flash, use that on second curtain and on 1/16th or 1/32nd power [and preferably have it diffused] and use a shutter speed anywhere between 1/4th and 5 seconds. As for ISO, I ran around with 400 ISO at almost every event I did.

If you don't have an external flash and you can change the power settings on your onboard flash, set it as low as you can and fiddle with it before the event so you can find a good exposure for it as a general idea. If you can, set that to 2nd curtain as well, and use the widest aperture you can.


*I say use the widest angle you can because of how crowded the event could be. You'll also get a bit more space [and distortion] around the subject, as well as more random bits of light and it can look almost 'dreamy.'
As for the widest aperture, this helps with the ambient light and, generally, your subject will be the only thing in focus adding to the 'dreamy' effect.



Also, if you can, try spinning the camera before the flash goes off. You can get some very cool looking swirl effects around the subject because of the light :]