Shooting indoors with no natural light…!

I know this is a nightmare situation for most photographers, pro and amateur… where a external flash becomes your best friend.  I experienced this last night at a small wedding function where I was shooting in very tough lighting conditions in a confined space.

Shooting with a Canon 24-70mm with f2.8, I thought this would be plenty to handle the situation without use of a flash, I was wrong.  Shooting at 1600 ISO was not giving me a fast enough shutter speed and I had to bump up to 3200, aaargh…

The images were coming out flat and lifeless so the flash had to come out of the bag.

Having access to a basic Jessops flash – 360 AFD  (highly recommended),  I had to rely on bouncing this light off walls and ceilings achieving a semi decent exposure…not easy especially when changing from portrait to landscape.  That’s where this flash comes in handy with the swivel head adjustment.

Conclusion :

Bouncing light off the ceiling and sticking with the 3200 ISO gave me a good balance between a fast shutter speed and sharp exposure.  The only downside was noise which had to be removed at post editing along with white balance adjustment for every picture.  In Lightroom, you can adjust an option called Luminence which helps despeckle but is something I ordinarily try to avoid.  With some contrast adjustment which I do for most of my images I ended up with good results.

Something for next time, I will experiment with some images on ISO 1600 and 3200 and see whether the slower shutter speed can be managed to reduce noise.

Better still avoid shooting in low light indoors altogether…not likely!

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