New Guy, help please?

[danteejr]

Hey there,

I'm only a newbie at photography, but my dad has provided me with a lot of good basic equipment. I have a Canon Rebel XT, an external flash, the basic 18-55mm lens and another zoom lens. I would say that my strong points are outdoors. However, when it comes to indoors, I suck. I just can't figure out what aperture or what iso or what film speed to use! Just this past weekend, I was at my sisters graduation. I was taking pictures from a large distance from the stands with my zoom lens. It was in this big college arena, and it was difficult for me to get ANY good pictures. The pictures came out too dark, too blurry, and no matter how much I tried to change the iso, the aperture, the flash, or the film speed, the pictures just kept coming out bad. When we started to take group photos, it was a little better, but I found that I couldn't get sufficient flash to hit my subjects. If i did a direct flash it would be too much, but I couldn't tilt the flash head any higher because the flash would get lost in the high ceilings. What could I have done in such a big arena, with difficult lighting, to get good pictures?

Anyways, that was a complete failure, and I started to worry about my up coming task. You see my sister is having a 18th birthday in a grand hall. It's this huge event that my parents paid a fortune for. She didn't want to spend the extra $ to hire a photographer, and seeing how I was decent, she hired me But as I said, I'm really bad at indoor photography! Here's the hall where her reception will take place (Take a virtual tour of Lombardo’s for your wedding, corporate event, business meeting or social function in MA. » Lombardos (scroll down and hit wedding reception. she'll probably want pictures along the staircase which you can see if you scroll down more). Now, the ceilings are pretty high, and I'm not an expert at flash photography either, so I'm not sure what to do. Let me also mention, that the room will probably be pretty dim. Can anyone give me any tips? Would a diffuser be useful in this case? Or would a reflector that attaches to the flash head be sufficient? I'm gonna be moving around a lot, so I don't think that an umbrella or some other big reflector would be a good idea. Please help me. I hope I'm not asking too much, but I just want to capture this meaningful event the best I can.

Thanks so much!

[Ivory_keys]

Sadly, I don't have much advice to offer but this

A) Find a online tutorial. I know Nikon has some online, so check the canon website and see what you can find.

B) Practice, Practice!

C) If it's going to be a little dark in the place (I didn't check it out, so i don't know), try and find a tripod to use sometimes. The dark it is, the slower the shutter speed will most likely be. Slow shutter speed = hard to get clear pictures. Tripods are amazing to fix that.

Sorry I don't have more advice to offer, i just got my first DSLR yesterday, so i'm learning too! Good luck to you!

[danteejr]

thanks for your advice though!

anybody else?

[sk66]

stroboframe and dome diffuser or similar...you are going to be stuck using flash. Get it off camera and diffused.

The reason you ran out with the first situation is even at max iso the max aperture of the kit lens was not allowing enough light...

Consider renting/buying a fast lens.... (as much as it pains me to say it) a "nifty fifty" might be a big help to you.