An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

[Barr1e]

Last night Anne and I spent a most enjoyable evening at Sinatra's Restaurant (Italian) with a Sicilian Elvis Presley sound alike.
These pix are my first real subdued night shots with the Canon G-11 and Speedlite 270EX flashgun. I know I need more practice with the camera and flash but I was surpised at the amount of shadow I had to deal with. Any hints or tips appreciated.

Elvis Pose


Hawaiian Mode


..and for the ladies a look at his belt


I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Regards. Barr1e

[Ian]

Re: An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

Looks like you had a great time

To avoid dark backrounds you could force the camera to shoot with a slow shutter speed. This will have no effect on the main subject as he/it will be frozen and illuminated by the flash, but the backgrounds will be brightened by the longer exposure through the ambient light.

You could also try using flash bounced off the ceiling. The flash will need more power than a direct shot and the extra light will spread around the room and lighten up the distant parts of the scene.

A combination of both suggestions would be even better.

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

Barrie, although I think you did pretty well to get these shots, using the Canon G11 is not the ideal camera for this job. I can't find the Exif data on the shots, but I suspect the ISO level was kept fairly low, yet the ambient light appears to be relatively low too. The problem then is that the flash is having to do all the work to get the exposure OK. Turning the camera into portrait format means the flash output is directed to the side as we can clearly see on the first 2 shots. The answer, as Ian says is to use a slow shutter speed in order to make use of ambient light, or increase the ISO level. The trade off of course is that colour noise levels are increased, esp with a small sensor camera. Keeping the camera in View format would possibly reduce the amount of shadow, because the flash is over the lens, also using a diffuser and bouncing it would help no end.

I'd be interested to know how you had the camera set

[Barr1e]

Re: An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

Barrie, although I think you did pretty well to get these shots, using the Canon G11 is not the ideal camera for this job. I can't find the Exif data on the shots, but I suspect the ISO level was kept fairly low, yet the ambient light appears to be relatively low too. The problem then is that the flash is having to do all the work to get the exposure OK. Turning the camera into portrait format means the flash output is directed to the side as we can clearly see on the first 2 shots. The answer, as Ian says is to use a slow shutter speed in order to make use of ambient light, or increase the ISO level. The trade off of course is that colour noise levels are increased, esp with a small sensor camera. Keeping the camera in View format would possibly reduce the amount of shadow, because the flash is over the lens, also using a diffuser and bouncing it would help no end.

I'd be interested to know how you had the camera set

Hi Stephen -

When I was at this venue previously (A Rat Pack evening) I took my E-3 and FL-50 flash and as the establishment is on the small side it was out of place. So this time I took the G-11. Settings used were P Mode - Iso400 - AWB - Exposure -1 and the EX270 Flash -1.

Thanks for your input, I can now see I made a clumsy mistake - doh. I had the camera in portrait mode for 90%ish of the shots and got as in this unworked pic shadow:

Those in landscape didn't suffer a similar fate. I also confess I only used bounce a couple of times.
I do little in the way of flash but this has proved a good learning curve.
Thanks so much again.

Regards. Barr1e

[Barr1e]

Re: An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

Hi Ian -

My thanks to you too.

Regards. Barr1e

[Barr1e]

Re: An Evening of Elvis Presley Songs

Amazing the power of Elements. Due to the error in my shooting the other evening I was looking at a way to enhance the first shot shown in this thread. I discovered under Filter/Render/Lighting Effects in Elements 7 this could be achieved by playing with the various lighting options offered in the program:

It possibly isn't to all tastes, but what do you think please?

Regards. Barr1e