flash outdoors at night - Advice needed

Hi all,

I'll be at a wedding tomorrow night and want to practice some shots outdoors, at night, with the harbour bridge and

city lights in the background.

I have a 5d, a tripod and a 580ex flash. My lens is either a 50mm 1.4 or a 24-105 f4.

I understand I need to control the ambient light to expose it correctly in the background.

Which lens and which mode to take a perfect pic?

thanks frupa63

<p>choose the 1.4 lens, on settings or mode, first I don't have that camera, so I can't say for sure. you will probably need a high ISO, and I would think you want your shutter wide, so possibly aperture mode, you may want to also do some exposure compensation. Just remember, you want your subjects to look good.</p>

<p>use the 50 and get the background looking how you want it in manual exposure mode, then add in the flash.</p>

<p>http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/1-natural-looking-flash/</p>

<p>You can simply use AV, aperture priority, but you will need a tripod handy. You will also need to know how to compensate your ambient and flash exposures (two separate things) to get the foreground flash on subjects and the background rendition, where you want them. In your manual, look up slow sync or similar phrase.</p>

<p>You can also do it manually, which means figuring out the exposure for the background and then correctly exposing the foreground/subjects with flash.</p>

<p>Good luck. I suspect a "perfect picture" is not in the works for you.<br>

This time of year (gets dark early) you'll find that your 24-105 quickly 'outruns' the effective flash range of your 580. Your exposures and WB will be all over the place.<br>

Sticking with your 50, you'll have generally competent flash coverage, but will likely blow highlights unless you diffuse and compensate - especially considering the "white" (wedding dress) and "black" (Groom's tux) that you're trying to capture. Meter closely, allow your flash to fully recycle and have a lot of batteries.</p>

<p>Christine,<br>

I imagine your background is going to be pretty consistent once the sun has set so meter in manual mode to get the background looking like you want. That will probably require high ISO, large aperture (50mm f1.4) and a slow shutter speed. Since the background will be OOF due to the large aperture, motion should not be much of a factor. Use your flash in TTL mode to expose your subjects. The flash will freeze your subjects so you shouldn't need a tripod. Depending on what ambient light you're dealing with, you may need to gel you flash as well. If there is anything you can bounce your flash off of, do it and your images will look all that much nicer. After attending Neil Van Niekerk's flash workshop, I realize you can bounce in a lot of situations where I didn't think it was possible before.</p>

 

<p>Your subjects can blur the image even though they are being primarily illuminated by flash. The night background scene may indeed need a long exposure. Perhaps long enough to require a tripod. If this is the case, instruct your subjects not to move at all for 3 seconds (or whatever covers the exposure time comfortably) after the shot is taken. This will illiminate the ghost image of them walking out of the frame, that can sometimes be captured by close by ambient light after the flash fires.</p>