So, for various reasons, it’s been decided that I’m shooting pictures at a conference I’m going to at the end of this week. I’ll be indoors for most/all of it, and as well as doing candid portraits of attendees, I’ll also be doing a few staged shots in cramped quarters at a client’s office.
My experience with photos was a few classes in high school (pre-digital), and then just being the ‘family photographer’ for family events. I would say I have a decent eye for composition, but my technical skills are fairly rudimentary.
My gear is:
Nikon D80
Sigma 18-50mm
Sigma Macro HSM II 70-200mm
Tokina AT-X Pro SD 12-24mm F4 (IF) DX
My questions are as follows:
I’m pretty sure that I will want some kind of flash. Particularly for the staged shots; I have no idea what kind of light I’ll have, and imagine that being able to at least get a little extra light will be necessary. Any recommendations for an amateur thrown into (semi-)prime time? I’m flying and am not planning on checking a bag of photo gear, so stands and that kind of thing are going to be a no-go for this event.
Due to space in my luggage, I’m contemplating leaving the 70-200 behind, but I am sure I will regret that, right?
As the D80 is relatively new to me (and is my first DSLR), I’ve got to spend some time the next few days figuring out how the darned thing works. Any obvious things that a n00b might miss when going through the vast menu of settings?
Any other general tips/advice/encouragement are greatly appreciated. I’m trying to not freak out about this too much!
(I posted this over at an online photography forum, but my post there doesn’t seem to show up, and since I want answers nownowNOW!, I ported my question over here. Apologies for filling the internet with redundancy)
I know nothing about the Nikon line, so cannot even touch the settings.
You will need varying levels of flash - the level for a portrait and the level for a group are very different.
Modern systems integrate the flash level with the focal length of the lens being used and the focus distance.
Before you do anything else, put a bottle of something on a table and treat it as a face. See if your flash gives the proper level of light.
Now, step into the next room and photograph the furniture from as far as you can get. Use the zoom and check the lighting.
Since you are mixing brands, be sure they cam all play together nicely.
Look up “Fill Flash” - how to keep shadows from ruining a face shot. Very low light used at close-mid range. The little pop-up flashes on DSLR’s are good for this.
But get real good (and comfortable) with the flash before you get there.
And take every lens you can get your hands on. The one you don’t have will be the one you need.
With regards to the subject of flash, I’d highly recommend the blog Strobist (free!) and the video course OneLight 2.0 ($75, but so, so worth it). In short, using flash is easy, but using flash to get good pictures takes some thought, and you will definitely want some form of hotshoe or off-camera flash. The setup doesn’t have to be too elaborate-- bring a cheap folding metal music stand, set it on a table, rubber band or tape the flash to the top, and stick one of those translucent white soup take-out things on it as a diffuser. Or, put the flash in the hotshoe and point it up at the ceiling. That’ll give you a nice, even, diffuse light, as long as the ceiling isn’t some weird color.
On-camera flash generally makes for awful people pictures since it’s a small, harsh light and it comes from straight on. It’s much better to have a diffuse light off to the side, or up above the photographer’s head. If you do have to use the on-camera flash, at least wrap a tissue or something around it to diffuse the light a little more and prevent it from being so harsh.
For advice from photography forums, you might try Nikon Forums– it’s the sister forum to Pentax Forums, which I use all the time. I can’t attest to the quality of the discussion, but it has the same admins, so I imagine they set the tone pretty well.
Just thought of one more thing-- try doing the sorts of shots you plan to do at the event beforehand, with friends, so you can get a lot of the trial-and-error out of the way before the event. I’d be happy to critique technical issues, if you want to post photos.
Frankly, I would try to avoid flash as much as possible.
The D80 should be able to take excellent photos with ISO as fast as 800 (maybe even 1600). That should allow you to take photos indoors with natural light. Try it and see.
If you need a flash, rent an SB-600, and use the built-in Commander Mode to control is, using the on-camera flash as a fill.
With only a week and no experience with flash photography, I would recommend avoiding it if possible.
Side note…use raw
If you have a big enough memory card, make sure you are shooting raw, or raw+jpeg. That way even if you bungle the white balance or exposure you have much more latitude for fixing it up in post.
I know many use raw for all kinds of other features, but I mostly rely on it to pick up the slack when I make mistakes: you can fix over/underexposure much better with raw, and wb is far better to work with in raw.
About the flash…
If you must have flash, the popup will be good for fill flash alone. In a pinch you can jack up the ISO and your tiny popup flash will have amazing new power. On an older camera, do test shots to get a feel for the noise level you are comfortable with.
Important note: if you go with flash, be sure to set your shutter speed at or below the max sync speed for that camera (probably 1/200sec). That might be taken care of for you if flash is invoked in one of the auto modes. If you use flash above this speed you will see part of the shutter curtain in your exposure.
For an external flash, you would want a flash with TTL metering for what you would be doing: a flash, typically made by the camera manufacturer, that does a quick pre-flash, takes a meter reading, then sets your exposure correctly, then shoots the photo.
That’s the only kind that is relatively safe and easy for a starting strobist to get going with.
And if you go this route, get a diffuser for it (e.g. a small collapsible softbox or one of those Gary Fong things).
Of course, that’s a bit of gear, and those TTL flashes are quite pricy, so this is only a good route if you want the gear for yourself or can cheaply rent it.
ETA: I suppose beowulff said the same thing in far fewer words. That SB-600 seems to be the trick. Strobe work is fun!
…I’m a photographer that specialises in conference photography. I’ve pimped my website once already today, I suspect that two is my limit! But my website is here:
www.bigmark.co.nz
With this gear you will survive. Having said that: you have no redundancy. If your D80 has a shutter failure, what is your plan B? How “mission critical” is it that you take these photos? I would either borrow a back up camera from someone, or ask the organizers to hire another nikon camera for you.
A flash absolutely needs to be in your kit. With a flash (well, two flashes, one as a back up!) added to the rest of your gear you can shoot virtually anything in any environment. Having said that you need to get the flash ASAP and start practising. It is very easy to do flash badly.
The Nikon range of flashes are excellent. I’m a canon guy and I use the Yongnuo 565 EX II (there are Nikon versions of this) and they work really well, and about half the price of the Nikon.
Whichever flash you buy, make sure it has TTL. TTL is an automated mode on the flash that “guesses” how much light it should put on the subject based on a number of different things. TTL works well a lot of the time, but sometimes the environment fools it, and you end up with over-exposed or underexposed images. There are ways to compensate for this, so make sure you learn how to do this before shooting live. Also learn how to shoot the flash in manual mode in case you end up in an environment where the TTL sensor keeps getting fooled completely. (Smoky/foggy nightclubs can sometimes do this.) In simpler words, buy now, practice and learn.)
I would look to bounce the flash if you can. I do everything flash-wise off camera using the techniques that F.Pu-du-he-pa-as has outlined. (Even when I do candid walk about I hold the flash in my left hand as opposed to being on camera.)
But as a newbie photographer dealing with everything else that will hit you I wouldn’t recommend starting out that way. Conference photography is freaking hard and you are using a camera that is several generations old that came out in 2006, which is perfectly doable (my first conference was shot with a Canon 5D which came out a year earlier) but there will be times that you struggle. Focus on learning the basics, then on the day don’t try anything fancy, just focus on getting the shot. There are plenty of youtube videos on bounce technique, spend an afternoon watching them. Even though bouncing give you nice soft light there are times when you have to go “screw this I’m getting the shot” and you just point the flash direct at your subject and take the picture.
The staged shots will need a bit of thought though. How do you want the pictures to look? What are the expectations of the person who wants the pictures? Link to some samples of some images and we can tell you how they were shot. But I’ll be blunt: you do not want to be trying anything tricky, and suggest that on-camera flash bounced off the ceiling or the roof are your safest bet.
Don’t you dare leave the 70-200 behind! My kit revolves around a Tamron 24-70 2.8 and a Canon 70-200 2.8 L. With those two focal lengths I can cover anything, and with the kit you’ve got you can cover everything as well. Its an essential part of your kit, IMHO, wouldn’t even consider leaving it behind.
Learn the basics. Firstly shutter speed, aperture and ISO, the exposure triangle. Learn the limitations of your camera. Learn how to use the auto focus. Your goal is to get correctly exposed in focus images. So focus on getting these two right first.
Adding flash changes the exposure equation. You need to deal with the flash synch speed (google it) and other things. So learn the basics of the exposure triangle, then learn what changes when you add flash.
Flash doesn’t always have to be used: learn to pick and choose when to use it and don’t piss off any presenters by using flash while they are speaking if there are other options. Shoot RAW.
Practice, ask questions here, practice, practice. Feel free to email me if something is tripping you up. Learn how to use your camera and flash. Learn what the buttons do. Read the manual. Then repeat. As long as you’ve got a good grasp of your camera controls, you should be fine. There will be moments that you take a picture, look at the back of the camera, and everything will be wrong. Don’t panic. Take a breath, close your eyes for a second, then figure out what has gone wrong. Every problem has a solution and is fixable.
I will definitely have a little time to practice ahead of time; I like the idea of using a dummy and experimenting with the flash.
This will be my mantra over the next week.
It’s kind of funny how this escalated from “hey, Eonwe has a good artistic/design eye and can cover emergency situations in a pinch,” to “hey, since Eonwe is going to this conference anyway, he can take the photos we’re planning on publishing in our trade magazine, and we don’t have to deal with the hassle/expense of sending an actual pro photog out to CA.” On the one hand, it’s crazy that the powers that be don’t quite appreciate the work that goes into this kind of stuff. On the other hand, hey, opportunity to gain skills!
TwoCarrotSnowman, that Ken Rockwell site is great! Thanks for the tip on that!
I’d second the idea of going with RAW+Jpg on this mission, if only because of the probable flourescent lighting that your going to have. Remember, have fun, if this were a mission critical conference, they would have contracted for a pro.
For cheap, almost no-fail lighting, set up a whiteboard at about a 45 degree angle to the facial plane of your subjects. Aim a couple of office lamps (clip-on lights, whatever is at hand) at this board so that the light reflects into your subject. Just above eye level is best, with a slight shadow falling below and to the side of the nose, but anything that gets light into faces and eye sockets will look better than overhead lighting. If nothing like that is available, you can buy a sheet of foam core, score it lengthwise and stand it up in a V shape. Or have someone hold a piece of poster board. This setup will have to be within four to six feet of the subject, so place it off to the side out of your frame. It would be best if all the lighting on the subject was the same type–all natural, all fluorescent or all incandescent.
Definitely shoot raw. Take a shot of a piece of copy paper held vertically for every change in lighting so that it will be easier to white balance the final shots.