Photos at Night, With an Unfortunate Twist or Two.

[eric.carson]

Hey everybody! I appeal to everyones collective knowledge which assurdly suprasses my own in every category, ESPECIALLY lighting! So what brings me here you ask?

I'm in a rather annoying photographic bind! Lets start off with the conditions shall we? The people I am photographing are under the following:

• Night Light - Meaning nothing natural, EVER!
• Jury Rigged Artifical Light - Think a mix of orange tinted high pressure sodium lamps, tungsten, off-blue mercury halide, and everythonge else AT ONCE! Yikes!
• Moving - At a high rate of speed to usually...
• Varying Distance - Usually stupid far, say 20' in the air, 30' away, both at once, etc
• Outdoors - Think desert wasteland, or 18th world country.

What the heck am I doing? Photographing hyperactive industrial zombie monkeys?

Not at all, It happens to be my co-workers, well, working! Okay so the description is fairly accurate after all! I'm stuck with a bridge camera for now (and a fixed output hotshoe flash), But I hope to pick up a bunch of Canon equipment in the say $1,400 USD range.

Under these rather strenious circumstances, and the fact that I am expected to work at the SAME TIME as I'm shooting photos, what would you reccomend? Especially considering the awful and sometimes non-existant lighting conditions?

[OsmosisStudios]

So, youre needing to stop action at great distances.

Youre in for a good one.

I dont know how far a 580EXII will reach, but 30' seems do-able, if a bit weak. Body doesnt really matter. Lens will, however. You'll still want something reasonably fast and with a good range.

Using a flash and a short shutter speed solves 2 things: artificial light, freezing motion. Using a fast shutterspeed means you'll only get the light from the flash and allows you to freeze motion.

What exactly is your work? And what do you need, specifically, to capture?

[eric.carson]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

What exactly is your work? And what do you need, specifically, to capture?

I am a rotary wing aircraft mechanic. I have been trained on small helocopters, (Think news and police scout size) but have been pressed into working on things as large as a CH-47! There is usually a proliferation of sacaffolds, engine powered light sets, and even some LED area lighting in a few rare cases. Usualy my fellow mechanics are perched around, ontop and more often than not, INSIDE the actual airframe iself!

The idea is to capture the mechanic at work, showing both the mechanic and the work involved to tell a small story, so-to-speak that is. This is particulary challenging because usualy the insides of arcraft are shadow and reflection nightmares, not even factoring in that a retro-reflective belt/vest is mandatory when outside at night.Yet I feel I would like to convey the poor condidions as well, a catch 22.


In summary:

• Reflective Surfaces - Scaffolding, Equipment, Parts
• Retro-Reflective Belt/Vest - TTL will usually underexpose the shot to compensate for the belt/vest beaming strobes light back at the camera.
• Portability - Since I will be need to be working at the same time, I'd rather the kit not be outragous in either size or weight, with size being the priority.

[OsmosisStudios]

A TTL system wont actually see the reflectivity of the vest, so that should make that point moot. Reflective surfaces can be good too: it depends on how big they are. Scaffolding wont be much of an issue, though if you want to get detailed shots of parts and stuff you may have to dial flash power back. Portability can easily be fixed if you get either a 270EX or a SB400 instead of one of the larger breatheren.

Remember: you can always bounce the flash to minimize the vest effects, or have the guy take the vest off for the few seconds it'll take for a photo.