Indoor event tips

[K3nt]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to photograph an indoor dogshow this coming weekend and I was wondering if you guys had any good tips. The lighting is fluorescent, but since the exhibition hall has very high ceiling it is slightly "murky". Flash usage may be restricted along the rings so that puts some challenge on it.
My choice of action would be to use my 7D with the 70-200mm mkII set at Aperture 3.5 and shutter speed at 1/250 with auto-ISO.

Do you think that would do it? Any tips or tricks are welcome.

 

[ronderick]

To start things off...

Shoot RAW (or JPG+RAW).

That will leave you room for post-processing. There's too many things going on, and in cases where there's too much action and no time to adjust settings (add in bad lighting situation), you probably want to leave yourself more leeway just in case.

 

[K3nt]

forgot to mention. I always shoot RAW. RAW is god...

 

[epsiloneri]

Since fluorescent lights are difficult to white balance, a grey card could come in very handy of you want accurate colours.

 

[K3nt]

Since fluorescent lights are difficult to white balance, a grey card could come in very handy of you want accurate colours.

Good tip. I'll be sure to bring one.

 

[NotABunny]

Average indoor lighting with high ceiling? I doubt you'll be able to use F3.5 and 1/250.

I've found that for indoor people shooting I need at least 1/200 and ISO 3200 (is maximum for 40D); I let the F-number float (TV mode). Usually, the F-number needs to be bellow 2.8. I strongly recommend you bring an F2 or faster lens... you know, just in case. Of course, a dog show may have more light.

As for accurate colors, you'll never get any with a non-standard light (D65). What you'll get with a card is accurate grey. All the other colors will be different than what standard light produces, so you'll get for example white whites, gray grays and orange skin (instead of pink)... though you'll be shooting dogs.

 

[endigo]

Any tips or tricks are welcome.

Since the lighting inside will probably be constant. I would use the spot metering mode to make sure that peoples faces are properly exposed, take some test shots, then set the camera to full manual for the rest of the shoot.

Anytime you use an auto exposure mode, you leave yourself open the camera seeing a reflection, or a window in the background, or a dark shadow, and messing up the photo. You can keep this under control by using full manual mode and adjust for slight variations with the RAW in post.

 

[Cornershot]

I shoot a lot of dark events like this where the light is ridiculously low. I use a 100mm 2.0, which works great on a crop sensor camera--though focus can be tricky wide open. AI servo all the way. I'm eventually going to pick up a 135mm. I use a wide zoom on a second ff body. ISO pumped up on both for faster shutter. Make sure the lights are not sodium vs. fluorescent. A lot of big events have those sodium lights. If you are able to use flash, and the event is fluorescent, slap a green gel on it and adjust the white balance to adjust. Yellow filter for sodium.

 

[steven63]

I've never been to a dog show so I don't know how crowded it would be but just thinking about that 70-200mm on a 1.6x seems a little long...I'm mainly thinking about when you would be walking around taking photos as the breeds are being prepped though...maybe you'd have to back up too far and then you'll be dealing with people walking between you and your subject. Just a thought.

Also I would advise keeping an eye on your ISO because it sounds like your going to be taking some low light shots.

 

[K3nt]

Good stuff here. I do have the length-wise very appropriate 18-135mm lens, but I don't think the aperture on that will be good enough as it drops down to 5.6 at 135mm.. atleast the 70-200mm is able to keep 2.8 at all lengths.
I do have an EF 50mm/f1.4 I might be able to use. =80mm on the 7D.
Well, thanks to everyone for their tips, I will be sure to post results once the event is over.

 

[NotABunny]

Since the lighting inside will probably be constant. I would use the spot metering mode to make sure that peoples faces are properly exposed, take some test shots, then set the camera to full manual for the rest of the shoot.

This should work for a dog show if most of the action takes place in a limited area (or the room is uniformly illuminated). All the people will look there and always have their faces lit by the same light source. The dogs should also be consistently lit by the light above them, especially since their snout takes the light from above.

 

[dstppy]

Good stuff here. I do have the length-wise very appropriate 18-135mm lens, but I don't think the aperture on that will be good enough as it drops down to 5.6 at 135mm.. atleast the 70-200mm is able to keep 2.8 at all lengths.
I do have an EF 50mm/f1.4 I might be able to use. =80mm on the 7D.
Well, thanks to everyone for their tips, I will be sure to post results once the event is over.

I'd stick to the 50mm and 70-200mm for this one . . . I avoided the 18-135 when I got my 60D based on an e-mail I got back from CR about sharpness (went with the 15-85 instead) so I don't know much about that lens.

 

[K3nt]

I tried out some of the settings last night (outdoor though) and noticed that spot metering will cause some problems when the dogs are really dark. It will cause the rest of the scene to severely overexpose when using spot metering so I guess I'll go with center-weighted as that seemed to work better with dark dogs as the subject. Spot metering worked really nice with our white dog.

 

[K3nt]

OK. Show's over and I managed to get out alive. I took some nice shots. I mainly used the 70-200mm MK II lens and even if it was cumbersome everynow and then it did well. The first thing I did when I got to the venue I set a custom white balance using the ambient light and that worked really well. I mostly shot in Shutter priority mode, since the dogs are never quite still I needed a shutter speed of atleast 1/160.
I let the camera worry about the ISO and aperture. for a couple of more static shots I used aperture priority with ISO still set to auto.
Here's a few examples of what I managed to get. More on the flickr site.


_MG_6728 by K3ntFIN, on Flickr


_MG_6868 by K3ntFIN, on Flickr


_MG_6906 by K3ntFIN, on Flickr

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to photograph an indoor dogshow this coming weekend and I was wondering if you guys had any good tips. The lighting is fluorescent, but since the exhibition hall has very high ceiling it is slightly "murky". Flash usage may be restricted along the rings so that puts some challenge on it.
My choice of action would be to use my 7D with the 70-200mm mkII set at Aperture 3.5 and shutter speed at 1/250 with auto-ISO.

Do you think that would do it? Any tips or tricks are welcome.

Some fluorescent lights flicker at the electrical power frequency (50 or 60 hz). A short exposure can catch the lights at a dim or bright part of the cycle and produce weird colors and horrible unusable lighting.

By using a shutter speed of 1/60 or slightly less, you can avoid having to deal with this. It just depends on the type of light fixtures and ballasts used.

If you are using 1/250 sec, review several test images to make sure that you are not seeing this happen.

 

[drummstikk]

Some fluorescent lights flicker at the electrical power frequency (50 or 60 hz). A short exposure can catch the lights at a dim or bright part of the cycle and produce weird colors and horrible unusable lighting.

By using a shutter speed of 1/60 or slightly less, you can avoid having to deal with this. It just depends on the type of light fixtures and ballasts used.

If you are using 1/250 sec, review several test images to make sure that you are not seeing this happen.

I have a local high school football field that does that. At least it did a couple of years ago when I was still deluding myself there was any money in youth sports photography.

A sequence at 1/500th or so would shift from a reddish-orange to green cast, even though I had set a white balance. Even the exposure seemed to fluctuate from normal to about a stop under. Kind of a nightmare for color correction. And while I'm sure theres a strong possibility that shooting at 1/60 or slower would fix the color issue, that's not really an option with football.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

ing 1/250 sec, review several test images to make sure that you are not seeing this happen.

I have a local high school football field that does that. At least it did a couple of years ago when I was still deluding myself there was any money in youth sports photography.

A sequence at 1/500th or so would shift from a reddish-orange to green cast, even though I had set a white balance. Even the exposure seemed to fluctuate from normal to about a stop under. Kind of a nightmare for color correction. And while I'm sure theres a strong possibility that shooting at 1/60 or slower would fix the color issue, that's not really an option with football.
[/quote]

A dog show might let you get away with 1/60 if the dogs are still, for sports, flickering lights are going to mean a lot of bad images to discard. I don't know of any good solution, flash is not the answer.

 

[drummstikk]

A dog show might let you get away with 1/60 if the dogs are still, for sports, flickering lights are going to mean a lot of bad images to discard. I don't know of any good solution, flash is not the answer.

Actually, flash is the answer (at least *an* answer). But doing it right is a huge pain in the hump that requires paying an assistant (or bribing a stepdaughter) on a job where I'm not really sure I'm getting paid myself.

Dog sports are actually more lucrative than people/kid sports, and the "parents" are friendlier. I do a fair amount of dog agility which requires the faster shutter speeds. One annual event is in an old warehouse converted to indoor soccer facility that would seem likely to have flickering lights but fortunately does not. As with the original poster, a rented 135mm f/2.0 is a valuable weapon at these types of events, where flash is NOT an option.

 

[Blaze]

Oh god, the flickering lights. How I despise them.

I shoot gymnastics on occasion and need about 1/400 sec. exposures to freeze the movement (slower or faster depending on the event). With the lights cycling at 60 Hz the colors and exposures are all over the place. Flash is never allowed at competitions.

I tend to shoot wide open with a Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 on my 7D and the ISO is often over 3200. I plan to get the 5DIII if/when it arrives (and maybe shoot more often with fast primes) for optimal light gathering capability, but there is nothing I can do about the damned flickering unless I shoot slower than 1/60 sec. and deal with bad subject blurring instead.