Dark background

[FilmPhotography-DuaneHorne]

I recently photographed a dance performance my daughter was in. When I got the film developed many of the images

were dark. The particulars are as follows:

 

Environment -- indoors with flourescent lighting, ceiling height about 8ft, I was about 8-10 ft from the subject.

 

Equipment: Canon Elan 7e camera, Tamron 28-300 3.5-6.3 with 81b filter, Canon 540 ez flash with no exposure

compensation (0) mounted on flash bracked with diffuser on flash head tilted at 45 degrees pointed at ceiling.

 

Film: Provia 400

 

What did I do wrong?

 

Most of my photography is nature with just a bit of fill flash. Where did I go wrong here?

 

Thanks for your advice

[nathan_stiles]

Duane, I'm confused here: the subject is "dark background", but the statement is "many of the images were dark". Including the subject?

 

If it's just the background, then your flash was falling off as expected. If you were 8' away from the subject, you lost one f-stop 11' away. If you were 11' away (easier than 10) you lost an f-stop at 16'.

 

The answer is better lighting-- set up some slaves to flash the room. Use a more powerful light to bounce off a wall or ceiling. If it wasn't dance, you could drag the shutter to 1/60 (assuming 60mm setting, or using a monopod) and adjust the aperture as needed.

[picturesque]

What were your camera settings, or what was your camera mode? If your flash was exposing correctly, dark backgrounds are usually a result of not dragging the shutter enough. With the Elan, if you were using aperture priority with the custom function (I forget which one) set to locking the shutter speed to 1/125th, you definitely will get darker backgrounds indoors.

 

Or, if the flash was underexposing (a tendency of Canon flash), the whole image could be dark.

[FilmPhotography-DuaneHorne]

Thank you all. As clarification, most of the images were underexposed. I had the camera set a "P" mode.