I'm an amateur and it's not that long since I bought a DSLR and started getting serious about developing my photography skills. 95% of the photos I've taken to date are landscape, nature, architecture and the occasional abstract and macro - in short, stuff that's outside and that doesn't move (except water and light trails). I'm starting to feel comfortable about taking these kinds of photos, in that I feel I'm getting my head around the main parameters and when my shots don't work out I have a general idea about what went wrong.
Over the past six months, friends, family and colleagues have started asking me to take photos of events in their lives or to just take photos of their kids. I like it because it gives me a low stress opportunity to practice and develop my skills. I make it clear that I can't promise they'll get any good photos out of it, and because most of them are used to point and shoot or iPhones they usually get at least some shots they're happy with, so it's a win-win situation.
However, as I'm doing more indoor event shooting I'm realising that I have no idea how to do events in low light. Some of the things are down to me not being as trained with my camera as I should be. For example, at a semi formal dinner yesterday I simply forgot to set the white balance manually (which would have saved me a lot of work in post), and I don't always intuitively know how to reach the right combo of aperture, iso, metering modes and exposure compensation settings fast enough to get the shots I want. It's a long time since I ventured out of auto-mode, but I'm still not good at using using manual in contexts where I don't have unlimited amounts of time to play around with my settings, so then I tend to just stick to aperture mode (or shutter speed when needed). I also don't have a proper flash.
So, I was wondering if anyone had some rule of thumb tips for dealing with these kind of indoor situations. As an example, yesterday I was at a semi formal dinner for about 25 people at an office canteen. The room was quite dark and lit with dim lights and candles, but there was a kitchen on the one side with bright lights. The lamps and some of the wall decorations in the room were green, so there was a general green light to deal with. Different guests made speeches, some with their back against that really bright light from the kitchen, while others were standing in that more generally dim, green light and then I took pictures with the kitchen lights behind me.
What's the best ways of approaching those kind of situations?
I shoot with a Nikon D600 and a 24-70mm 2.8. I also have 50mm and 150mm primes and a tripod. I don't own an external flash.
Over the past six months, friends, family and colleagues have started asking me to take photos of events in their lives or to just take photos of their kids. I like it because it gives me a low stress opportunity to practice and develop my skills. I make it clear that I can't promise they'll get any good photos out of it, and because most of them are used to point and shoot or iPhones they usually get at least some shots they're happy with, so it's a win-win situation.
However, as I'm doing more indoor event shooting I'm realising that I have no idea how to do events in low light. Some of the things are down to me not being as trained with my camera as I should be. For example, at a semi formal dinner yesterday I simply forgot to set the white balance manually (which would have saved me a lot of work in post), and I don't always intuitively know how to reach the right combo of aperture, iso, metering modes and exposure compensation settings fast enough to get the shots I want. It's a long time since I ventured out of auto-mode, but I'm still not good at using using manual in contexts where I don't have unlimited amounts of time to play around with my settings, so then I tend to just stick to aperture mode (or shutter speed when needed). I also don't have a proper flash.
So, I was wondering if anyone had some rule of thumb tips for dealing with these kind of indoor situations. As an example, yesterday I was at a semi formal dinner for about 25 people at an office canteen. The room was quite dark and lit with dim lights and candles, but there was a kitchen on the one side with bright lights. The lamps and some of the wall decorations in the room were green, so there was a general green light to deal with. Different guests made speeches, some with their back against that really bright light from the kitchen, while others were standing in that more generally dim, green light and then I took pictures with the kitchen lights behind me.
What's the best ways of approaching those kind of situations?
I shoot with a Nikon D600 and a 24-70mm 2.8. I also have 50mm and 150mm primes and a tripod. I don't own an external flash.
