Lay My Hat

Really hoping someone can help....

My son's student's association have asked me to take photos of them at their school masked ball.....

I have a Canon EOS 700 D with
17 - 85 mm lens
18 - 55 mm lens and
10-17 mm lens

none of which will be adequate enough for low light photography and loads of moving teenagers....

I do have a tripod and son was thinking of a photo "corner" where they could go for posed photos then some random reportage style pics ...

I've said I'll try my best but really don't want to disappoint them ...... any miraculous tips from those in the know would be MOST welcome!

thanks in advance
Elena

www.dordogne-holiday-villa.co.uk
www.instagram.com/lescrouquets
www.lescrouquets.net

There are better photographers than me on this site, but one trick I have used before is to shoot video - you'll probably need your tripod again - then pick stills out of the video. You'll get lots of rubbish, but also hopefully some good unposed shots.

Assuming you have no wish to buy a faster lens, I guess your other principal option is to wind up the quasi ASA on your camera, but you have to set that against increased grain - you might achieve a nice "reportage" look however!

Mols

Thanks Mols!

I have done that before with video when my two kids sang at a lot of concerts last year and managed to get some not too deadly shots even with the higher grain / lack of sharpness...

There will be about 400+ people there tonight though all probably wanting to be in some photo or other so unlikely to get enough good ones like that .

I'll probably take some video anyway just as a back up! Thanks!!

Elena

www.lescrouquets.net
www.dordogne-holiday-villa.co.uk
www.instagram.com/lescrouquets

Obvious stuff like get in closer, use a tripod, use flash, if flash is inappropriate then shoot near some form of light. Set to manual or semi-auto, aperture priority and open the aperture. But each of these options has a downside on depth-of-field and shutter speed.

Rent a better/longer lens for a day or so if this is an important event.

If you are going with the video/screen capture option, then if possible, shoot progressive video(rather than interlaced), ie 1080p rather than 1080i. Captured interlaced images look a little more fuzzy because they are an interlace of 2 half-frames captured at slightly different times.

Do some tests in similar light before the big day.

Good luck!

Elena - so how did it go?

Mols

Thanks for asking Mols!

Well it went better than I thought it would as I wasn't expecting anything great.....

It was very dark with just the coloured concert lighting most of the time so ending up using flash most of the time ....took over 300 photos and spent ages editing them all to get just under 200 -
still a bit grainy but turned quite a few into B&W which seemed to work better -they'll see them today so hope they'll be happy with them ....any professional looking at them might say otherwise ....!

Tried to post a couple of pics but failed miserably - there are some on my FB page though if you fancy a peek !

www.facebook.com/elena.djelil

Thanks again!
Elena

www.dordogne-holiday-villa.co.uk
www.instagram.com/lescrouquets
www.lescrouquets.fr

Hey, they're really good, Elena, you should be very pleased with them.
Looks like everybody's having a whale of a time!

Cheers
Mols