Indoor party - critique & help!

[hjstrater]

I did some pictures at my friends party for her kid and I wanted some critique and advice. It was all indoors with pretty crummy indoor lighting. Most of my shoots are normally outside that I practice with, so this one was a little difficult for a newer photographer. I shoot with the D90 and these were taken with the kit lens.

Here is a photo taken:


Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/4.8
Focal Length 42 mm
ISO Speed 800

[tomservo51]

Well, right off the top your washing out their faces with your flash. There are several ways to fix this, the cheapest would be some type of sticky diffuser. I've never used one personally. Are you planning on taking lots of indoor pics of kids?

Edit: found this DPS article that might help: http://www.digital-photography-schoo...and-reflectors

And this: http://www.stickyfilters.com/ It looks like they are only correcting your white balance tho.

[hjstrater]

Not exactly. I only have one other person asking me to help out at their birthday party but it's not until March. Aside from that, I have no idea. People just ask and I'll do it for them. I just want to give them the best I can for them, you know what I mean? Not just that, but I want to learn how to do it. I tried keeping most of the photos in aperture priority, but occasionally switched to manual when I couldn't get a good shot. I refuse to use automatic, because I want to learn this camera in and out.

This was taken with no flash:


Exposure 0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture f/5.0
Focal Length 58 mm
ISO Speed 250

[tomservo51]

Those are better pics IMO :P

[hjstrater]

Thank you. However they are still grainy, and I want to figure out how to fix it and make them sharper, more professional looking if I can.

[Doug Sundseth]

Bounce your flash off the wall or ceiling when that's possible. When it's not, take the flash off the camera, even if you have to use a sync cable and hold it by hand.

[tomservo51]

Originally Posted by hjstrater

Thank you. However they are still grainy, and I want to figure out how to fix it and make them sharper, more professional looking if I can.

I'm not sure what you mean about being grainy. It looks like you are using the built-in on-camera flash to me. What lens are you using?

[hjstrater]

When I zoom in and look at my photos closer, you can see the amount of grain in them and noise - that's what I want to get rid of.

The building I was in was HUGE, so the ceiling was a good 30 feet above me, at least. I feel like it would be hard to bounce light off of something when you're trying to take photos of kids running around, having fun and laughing..


EDIT: I was using the kit lens in those photos. I also have a 55-200 MM

[graciousness]

Just to let you know, you need to read the critique forum rules, particularly about the part where it says that you can only post ONE photo in the critique section at a time.

I think you should edit your posts and leave one photo out before the moderators do that for you, or delete the thread altogether for breaking critique rules.....

And in regards to flash, you need to learn how to bounce the light from your flash to get a more flattering, even lighting on your subjects. It looks like, however, the ceilings are pretty high in this venue so you are left with bouncing off walls if you can. However, put bounce techniques into practice and you'll see your photos will improve.

[hjstrater]

Sorry about that, I edited them.

Where can I read about bounce techniques? Any tips you can offer?