Retaining ambient light in a dark club

[zarekr]

I shot a baby shower last week in a dark club environment which had some really interesting ambient light on the ceiling:



Despite using a D700 combined with the 24-70mm f2.8 Nikkor - an excellent low-light combination which could have dealt with this lighting relatively well, I used my SB900 flash on the camera which allowed me to underexpose the background and have my subjects slightly brighter, which gives them a lot of pop.

I had 3 things in mind when I was setting up for taking these photos:

1. I exposed first for the ambient light, my settings were aperture f2.8 (because of the extreme low light), shutter 1/160s (because I wanted to freeze the action) and ISO 1600 (to grab the ambient light because I needed a higher shutter speed to freeze the action). I was shooting in manual mode.

2. I then added the flash and made sure to bounce and swivel it, paying careful attention to where the light would reflect back from. I don't like pointing the flash straight up because it leaves heavy shadows under the eyes, nose and chin and doesn't provide nice catchlights in the eyes, so I usually try to be aware of the walls and ceiling and get a bounce position that looks something like an umbrella, ie. 45 degrees and above head height, pointing down.

3. I had to gel the flash to match the ambient light which was fluorescent, so I used a green gel. If I hadn't done this the background would have come out with a green tint and the subjects would have come out with a daylight colour. Once I had matched the ambient and flash colours I altered them to a warmer shade in Lightroom afterwards.

I have written about this in a bit more detail and with a few more photos on my blog:

How I shot it: Baby shower How I Shot It ZAREKRGRAPHY – Photography by Zarek Rahman

Thanks for looking!

[elimasmx]

Your pictures look really nice.
Thanks for sharing your info with lots of detail (:

[zarekr]

thanks for your comments, I am glad you liked them!

[Simio]

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

[smitheyes]

Fantastic, nice detail and pics

[zarekr]

Thank you both for the positive comments

[zarekr]

A quick note for those who have subscribed to this thread: I have just written a follow up article to this which deals with some problems I had using these techniques at a recent corporate event. The article is here. Thanks!

[Matt L]

I hadn't thought about colour balancing flash with mishmashed ambient conditions with gels. Totally makes sense. I'll be buying my first off camera flash some time this year, I hope. Thanks for the tip!