Shooting for a houseparty

[hzc1995]

Hi guys. My friend wants me to shoot photos of guests at his next houseparty (there's usually a couple of hundred people there, it goes wild) and I want to shoot photos like you see in nightclub pictures etc, you know the ones where you see the guy walking around the floor and taking photos of people? I currently have a d7200 with a 35mm f1.8, and I'm seeing from posts on the Internet most people reccomend getting an external flash to bounce lights off the walls and stuff. I can't afford a flash right now, I was just wondering if there's anything I can do without one in this situation, would having my in built one and setting it on rear curtain sync give me the result I want? Also considering the low light and whatnot, to generalise what settings would you guys reccomend for such shots? Obviously it won't be exact, but for a base of a starting point it would be good to know

thanks in advance!

[John King]

Ramp your ISO to 3200 (or even 6400 ... ) and use your on-board flash for fill.

If my E-M1 will handle this, your D7200 should be just a squeak better.

Make sure you shoot RAW + JPEG and turn your noise reduction and sharpening down a tad. Nothing worse than the pastel look from oversharpened JPEGs with too aggressive NR applied.

Try to learn to rely on your AWB. Fix WB problems in post using the RAWs.

Shoot using aRGB rather than sRGB as this will give you better colour balance and skin tones.

V. important to experiment beforehand ... !!

[Gazza]

@John King has addressed some of the technical stuff (stuff is another really technical term, google it )

Looking back through your posts, I see you have a that talent for spotting things of interest...my advice, "take heaps of 'Confidence' with you"




Cheers ...

[Mark L]

Make sure you shoot RAW + JPEG and turn your noise reduction and sharpening down a tad. Nothing worse than the pastel look from oversharpened JPEGs with too aggressive NR applied.

Try to learn to rely on your AWB. Fix WB problems in post using the RAWs.

As with the WB thing, if you plan on PPing RAWS then just turn NR and sharpening to zero in camera. You computer can do this better than your camera. (yes some will say you can adjust it all later if it's taken in RAW ......)

[John King]

As with the WB thing, if you plan on PPing RAWS then just turn NR and sharpening to zero in camera. You computer can do this better than your camera. (yes some will say you can adjust it all later if it's taken in RAW ......)

Gidday Mark

That's also an available tactic. This will probably vary quite a bit from camera to camera, and maker to maker. My E-30 is different from my E-1, E-510 and E-M1, for example.

I set my cameras up knowing that the JPEGs will be used either 'as is' or with minimal PP done using one or other of the PS actions I wrote years ago. That usage and those actions determine how I set my camera/s. I almost never bother editing any JPEG I have taken manually. If I want to edit a shot for any reason/purpose, I always start from the RAW. Do most PP in ACR using a ProPhotoRGB 16 bit colour space and ditto in PS. These are saved as either PSD-16 or TIFF-16 files when completed.