disco photos.

[craig cowling]

hi there

can anyone help with the best way to take photos in disco and that type of environment so that you still get all the effect of the lights and so on.

regards craig

[MrJones]

you chose yourself one of the hardest lightning situations
there are three ways to deal with it:
1. bump your ISO to maximum and open your aperture to it's max. that will help you catch the lights and mood.
2. use on camera flash. this will help you catch the moment and freeze action but you'll lose the background lights.
3. use on camera flash and still catch the background lights. to do this you'll need to direct your flash in an upward position, bump your ISO to a high value (but not too high to avoid noise) and use a slow shutter speed of about 1/30 or 1/60. this will light up your subject with the flash and still help you catch the background lights and mood with the slow shutter speed and high ISO.

take into consideration that here the lens and camera quality really counts.
it will be much much easier to achieve that with a full frame camera and a fast lens.

[Jim Bryant]

Yup........shoot at a low shutter speed f-stop and a bit of flash. here's the capture info for a Disco shot I captured during a Decade of Disco at the EMP in Seattle. Just use these as a guideline and make test shots before the event starts.


Date: 11/23/02
Time: 9:40:04
Latitude:
Longitude:
Model: Canon EOS-1D
Serial #:
Firmware: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Frame #:
Lens (mm): 14
ISO: 400
Aperture: 4
Shutter: 1/3
Exp. Comp.: -0.7
Flash Comp.:
Program: Shutter Priority
Focus Mode:
White Bal.:
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998) (embedded)
Contrast:
Sharpening:
Quality:

[MrJones]

Jim had a great idea with the photos and EXIF so here are a couple more examples:


IMG_7677 by MrJonesil, on Flickr

Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/2.2
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 1600
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Fired


IMG_7906 by MrJonesil, on Flickr

Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Exposure 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture f/2.2
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 1600