some people may get some use out of it.
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VISIT HTTP://WWW.OZNIGHTLIFE.COM FOR PHOTOS TAKEN USING BELOW INFORMATION!
I am only relatively new to digi photography, and i think starting by doing club shots is a bit like being dropped off the deep end :S
Before anyone starts taking anything i say particularly seriously, i have only been recently started doing club photography, so i myself am just learning and this is a little information that i have picked up from personal experience, it may not work for you! It just seems so many photographers i meet get cranky when i ask for advice as if its some secret club you need to weasle your way into in order to get some help. So instead ill just give out what ive learned in the hope it might save some other people some time to learn it.
Since I found the club environment something you can just sit there taking a zillion pics of til you get the one great shot of your subject (like taking pics of still objects), to help anyone that might like some of the results i get, ive put together a bit of a post below that can possibly help people out. Once again im not a pro, and i dont claim to be one! So im always open to help from others! I do it cos i like it
I only have one lens i use, which isnt ideal for clubbing use, but its a good compromise.
Why club pics are a bitch
Anyone who has tried club photography will know theres a million factors working against you, or your cameras abilities, some of which though can help create great effects. Either way its a pain in the ass to actually get it all right every time for that split second pic that might pass, and you miss it.
The biggest problems i have found are the changing light conditions, the close quarters in a club, people pushing, shoving, the smoke causing the focus to muck up, stopping people spilling drinks on your pride and joy camera, people walking past your shot when trying to take a pic from more than 2ft away, the low light requiring longer exposure but causing blur when drunk people move, the noises and distractions that detract from trying to remember every setting on the camera, the flash intensity, the flash bounce angle, the aperture setting, modifying any custom settings you might want to use in your camera, the exposure time, not to mention the fact this all has to be done while deciding what angle you want to shoot, trying to find the buttons and knobs you need, without taking too long and losing your shot. This can especially be hard if you have had a few drinks at the particular venue
so many variables and factors to consider to get a half decent shot, but i guess its one of those things that if you start with the hard stuff, the easier things like still subjects in consistent lighting should become quicker to learn. Ive found lighting is the number 1 thing when it comes to getting a useable pic.
NOTE THAT A LOT OF THE EXAMPLE PICS HERE ARE TO DEMONSTRATE WHAT _NOT_ TO DO. This is not an example of my best images! (before people give me crap for my poor pics)
ISO SPEED
when i started off i was using iso 1600 as i wasnt good enough to get the pics at slower speeds, i since went to 800 then 400, now i usually dont go below 200 unless im trying to capture a specific effect or im in a rush to get something (a grainy in-focus pic is better than nothing at all).
Heres a sample of iso 1600, note teh grainyness:
probably a more obvious one of the noise is below:
Now a sample at ISO200 (very little to no noise, except from the JPEG compression)
APERTURE AND DEPTH OF FIELD
For pics of headshots i use f2.8. if i can get some distance between me and the subject (difficult in clubs) i will stand back, and use a bit of zoom, still at 2.8 to get some nice DOF.
Heres a sample of a f2.8 image, with good Depth of Field.
If you can get far enough away, to get a full body pic, in a club environment, your going to want to take the pic vertically so you can still be close, not horizontally (where you would need to be a fair distance away), so get a battery grip so you dont feel retarded using the standard shutter button. This helped me heaps!
Taken from a bit of a distace, you can get the whole body, but still in focus:
HOWEVER, when taking pics like this, sometimes due to the large aperture (eg f2.8), you may wind up with the subject out of focus, but the other background IN focus, like the below pic:
and again below, with a group of people, only some of them are in focus:
For this pic, i should have either gone a f4.5 or something, or paid more attention to where it was focusing.
when using really big apetures, like f1.8, it can get expensive to get wide angle lenses. At one stage i played around with a 50mm f1.8, which gave awesome DOF, and allowed you to have shorter exposures as it let a lot of light in, but it was next to impossible to get far enough away to take a pic at 50mm zoom.
as shown below:
FLASH VS NO FLASH
I use a flash, and external canon 430EX which i never usually aim at the subject unless theres fast moving action, like dancing, in which case i use long exposure, F3.5 or so, and a faster iso, so i get the subject in focus (lit up by flash), blurred background movement and lots of the colour of light behind etc. This is great for images like lasers behind the subject etc.
If you want a silhouette shot you can try without the flash so you get outlines of people, especially cool in nightclubs with lasers. This, however can be a little tricky as i personally find the 350d struggles to focus in low light and i have to use the 430ex's Focus Assist to help the camera out. In cases where the camera 'searches' for a focal point, i typically find its too hard to manual focus with the flashing lights and so forth distracting me, so i turn on the external flash and put my hand over it. This isnt a problem for those with 20d, 30d, 1d etc as they are able to make the FA beam come on without the flash firing at all, 350d can not do this as far as i am aware
Heres an example of no flash, silhouettes:
For face shots if i cant bounce teh flash (ie black roof/wall), i use a diffuser, i havent found an aftermarket diffuser yet so i use the built in one on the 430ex.
I prefer to bounce the flash off a roof or wall etc, to get more natural lighting.
Heres a sample of how i LIKE pics to look when they are in an area where theres no 'cool' colour effects to be had, note theres still skin tone and no over exposure or unflattering reflection of bright light on teh subjects:
I generally dont like making everything so 'lit up', but when theres no other lighting, its the only option, i try to preserve the 'club atmosphere' the club lights give, as they are usually colourful and add to the picture.
SHUTTER SPEED
Hmm, this is the tough one.. I generally set it to whatever is going to give the effect i want. I always use manual mode since i want to learn everything myself rather than leave the camera to change the settings on me, this way i can see the effect of changing each individual setting myself.
I guess out clubbing, i use between 1/10" (about the best you can hope for when hand held without much lighting or direct flash) and 1/50" (for better lit sections).
as i mentioned earlier, i often 'freeze' the subject with a flash but let the background flow using a longish exposure, so i get an effect like this:
since the foreground is captured by the flash, it overpowers the fact i obviously would have blur from moving the camera around.
You can also get effects like this from similar techniques (note the trace of the guys hand and the fact its quite obvious there is camera shake since it was handheld, and that the subject was moving, but you dont notice it too much):
So in short, shutter speed i change ALL THE TIME, it basically changes every pic i take, i cant really help any more than that, it depends what the subject is. shutter speed will allow you to acheive different effects as well, such as:
(combination of zoom and strong flash)
(moving camera, zooming, during long exposure)
(moving camera, zooming and strong flash to freeze subject)
Be careful with "funky effects" though! when i learned it i found i was playing around with it so much i spoiled what would haev been otherwise GOOD actual useable pics! Use it sparingly.
Its an expensive hobby though, heres my current setup:
EXIF INFORMATION
I suggest for anyone that wants to copy other peoples techniques or to learn, just save the images, go properties and advanced, you can find the stored EXIF info which shows everything from iso to aperture and even focal length at the time the image was taken. I use this all the time to reverse engineer other peoples pics
I suggest downloading "opanda exif extractor", you can see exif info without downloading the pic first.
Anyways, that was a seriously long post
I hope it helps some people out, i know it would have saved me a lot of time if someone stepped me through all that.
As i said, theres some more pics at http://www.oznightlife.com - i tend to include a high percentage of the pics i take, as im not trying to showcase my abilities or best pics, more or less just ones that the people in the pics would want to download at the end of the evening/event. If i wanted to make my skills "look" better, ideally i would probably only have a webpage with 20 pics i have taken.. itd make me look half decent but itd prob annoy all the people that are expecting to be able to see their pics. I cant possibly get a 'great' pic of everyone i see, so i sacrifice my own rep as a photographer to make others happy
So if you want to look good, take a heap of pics and only show people the best few
