help: I'm shooting a debut party (night)

[kwai_perez]

hi! i'm shooting a debut party next week. my problem is it's a night party. if i don't use a flash, what will be my settings? i know ISO should be higher but how about the white balance? should i use aperture-priority? how about if i use built-in flash? what will be my ISO and everything? thank you so much!

[MrJones]

it's really hard to tell as we don't really know the lightning setup at the party.
my guess is you won't be able to take decent without the use of a flash and you won't be able to take decent shots with the popup flash. so basically, you won't be able to take decent shots.
I know I'm repeating myself but that's the truth.
you can use a fast lens like the 50mm 1.8 with the combination of a very high ISO but what you'll end up with (assuming that will grant you high shutter speeds) is a very shallow DoF which means that if you're taking photos of more than 1 person - someone will end up out of focus. AND you'll get a lot of noise in your photos since you're using high ISO values (my guess is you don't have a full frame camera in your hands).

hope it's not a paid job..

[Aegea]

Beg, borrow, rent, buy or steal a flash! And practice with it a lot beforehand.

[Biomech]

+1 get a flash.
WBalance depends on what lights are there. Shoot RAW. Definately don't use Aperture mode unless you have a lens or flash to support it. If you used a kit lens - generall 3.5-5.6, that's going to force long shutter speeds and you'll just get alot of very blurry photos. Plus the closer you get to f/0.0 - generally - the less sharp the image becomes.

[Jim Bryant]

A lot of it depends on what camera and lenses you presently own. Faster the lens, the more light you get to expose with.

[kwai_perez]

thanks for your replies..basically, the lights are just what you have inside your house..what will be the white balance? do you just set it to auto?