Lighting.

Well on Saturday night I had a lovely BBQ/party to attend. Nothing wrong with this. However, as I have a camera, and am expected to be amazing with it, I was asked to bring it.

Now I know what you’re thinking – “what’s wrong with that?”

Let me tell you. Where as I am capable of taking some good photographs, and relish the opportunity to get some portraits of people, being asked to do it puts some pressure on. They are almost expecting award winning photos, and lots of them. However, because they are all people I know, it is difficult to be in the right frame of mind to take photos of them. Also, I too was a guest at this party, so didn’t want all of my time taken up trying to get a good photo.

So, on went the party, and I sat there with my camera. I tried to use just the 50 prime, but that wasn’t ideal. People were all too close, expecting me to get group photos when I just couldn’t. The lighting was possibly the worst I had ever seen too. Vastly reduced daylight, candles burning, and ambient light coming from house windows. Awful. Using a flash washed everything out, but without it I was stuck with dark or noisy images. Because of this, I think 99% of my photos were immediately deleted.

Oh as a side note, this whole thing was not helped by the fact I too was consuming alcohol. Which leads me on to the next part of the night. Chinese lanterns. These are excellent things, and I was happy to see some great photo opportunities present themselves.

Alas, being intoxicated, and in a very big rush, I left the camera on manual focus by accident. Meaning most of these photos were deleted also.

So here are the two which I think could maybe pass for keepers. Genuinely disappointed with what I came away with, but oh well.

For both of these shots i was pretty much laying on the ground was using the kit lens.  

Both have been slightly edited in an attempt to reduce the noise levels. However, i had to shoot at 1200 ISO, so this was never going to be perfect. This second one is my favourite, and will hopefully be an instant hit with everyone.

Luckily there was a second DSLR there, a Canon, which was used on auto all night. At least there will be family photos to keep, even if they aren’t all that great.

T.