Tag Archives: Events

Shooting an event: choice of shots

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A few tips, on and off over the next few days, about shooting events. Events such as parties, clubs, openings: lots of people and they are camera aware.

Today: What to shoot. I recommend that you shoot “all three views”:

  • Overview shots, showing “the whole thing”: wide shots with the entire venue, entire room, and so on.
  • Medium shots, with one or two people
  • And finally: detail shots. An aspect of the room. The stereo and a CD that’s playing Notes on the fridge. Or like in this shot, the food:

(Can you see that I bounced the flash off the ceiling behind me?)

If you shoot plenty of all three views, you will have plenty of material for a great album. And people remember the details!

Dark trick

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A trick from the dark side.

When you have to shoot in low light, and I mean super-super low light (think f/1.4 at 1/15th sec at 3200 ISO), you can underexpose and pull up the image later.

This introduces nice (grain).

So then you… and here’s the trick…..Convert it to black and white.

Noise looks OK in black and white, and muddy colour disappears.

So sometimes b&w just means “it wasn’t good enough for colour”.

And then, sometimes an images just looks better in b&w.

Wide

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What lens to put on your camera?

Sometimes it is difficult to decide. But sometimes it’s easy.

Social events are easy. When shooting such events, where there are people socializing, eating, drinking, I recommend a wide angle lens between at least 24 and 35mm “35mm equivalent” (greater range is ok of course).

Meaning that if you have a full frame camera, use a lens in that range. If, as is more likely, you have a crop camera like a Nikon D5000 or Canon Digital Rebel, you use a lens 50-60% smaller to give the same effect, i.e. a lens in the 16-24 range. Like a 17-40.

At yesterday night’s event with Wendel Clark, ex Leafs captain (below) I used a 16-35 wide angle zoom on my 1.3 crop camera (I used the new Canon 1D Mk IV).

I do this a lot, and so can you.

Remember to get close to people.

Another option is to use not a zoom, but a wide angle prime lens. On my full frame camera I use a 35mm f/1.4 lens quite often for these events.

The pictures that the three above are part of will be on Oakville.com in the next few days.