Birthday Party in Indoor Play Area

[candidrachel]

Ugh! Those kinds of play areas always have shocking lighting. Flourescant, dimly lit, primary coloured walls and ceilings and nowhere to bounce the flash!

My daughter is having her 8th birthday party in one on Sunday - her choice and I just know that the photos will come out abysmal About the only good photo will be when she blows out the candles lol!

Maybe I can get my hubby to wear a white shirt and bounce the flash of him lol!

The deal is that 1 hour will be spent in the sports hall playing all kinds of games like sack races, relay races, egg and spoon etc and the other hour will be spent inside the play structure/ball pool aperatus.

Anyone got any ideas on how to achieve great birthday party shots in such challenging lighting?

[SusanH1970]

Do you have a speedlight or are you using the popup flash? If you've got a speedlight, I've heard really good things about these: Micro Apollo | Westcott Pro Photography and Video Lighting

You'd probably be able to find somewhere in the UK that stocks it. I know B&H here in the States does.

[candidrachel]

No way am I using a pop up flash!! I have a canon 430ex. Thanks for the link Susan I'l check it out.

[scootermcq]

CR...

Save the money, and try DIY Reflector-Diffuser first. Costs about $5.00 and works great. If you have flourescant lighting, gell your flash green, put the white balance to forourescant and have at it....

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by scootermcq

CR...

Save the money, and try DIY Reflector-Diffuser first. Costs about $5.00 and works great. If you have flourescant lighting, gell your flash green, put the white balance to forourescant and have at it....

Good one, Scott!

Though the softbox would be nice to have anyway...LOL I'm thinking about getting one.

[Drkranger]

Getting a hotshoe flash diffuser is what you want, although you may have some difficulty with constant action unless your flash refreshes really fast. You don't need a reflector of course. A hotshoe flash "softbox" works too. Works just like a strobe softbox, just smaller.

As for shooting, shoot RAW and you can adjust the white balance in post. If you don't use a flash, you can obviously raise the ISO and set the aperture as low as possible to get a fast enough shutter speed to capture any action.

Sounds like you're wanting to use the flash, so the suggestion Scott had is a good one.