My travails as a group photographer: This is a confessional comment of a shoot from last weekend that I awkwardly stumbled through. I really blew my first experience as a group...

lwerthe1mer Loc: Birmingham, Alabama

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from last weekend that I awkwardly stumbled through.

I really blew my first experience as a group, probably 35 years ago. I was shooting with a Canon fTb. To shoot flash, the shutter speed had to be set on 1/60. Somehow I inadvertently moved the shutter speed to 1/70. Each picture was 1/2 what I wanted to shoot and the other 1/2 was black. My photos were unusable, and I was embarrassed.

35 years later, I guess memories of my photographic blunder had faded. I was asked to be the group photographer at a friend's birthday party. The experience was quite an adventure.

The party was in a long and narrow room, at night, with large picture windows facing a street, with views of a "lit up" shopping center with lot of car headlights and taillights. To make matters more challenging, the room was decorated in part with mylar balloons floating at the ceiling. The balloons had long, colorful ribbons hanging to perhaps 5 feet over the floor (about shoulder or face level on most people).

In a relatively small room containing 60 or 70 people, I assumed my mission was to simply photograph the faces of everyone in attendance, typically in groups, and to photograph the birthday cake.

I brought both of my cameras to the party, a Sony a7ii with a 35mm f2.8 Zeiss lens, and a Sony RX10ii with its built-in Zeiss zoom lens. My flash, a Youngnuo 560 III, which I used in the shoe on top of the cameras. The flash did not communicate well or consistently with either camera (my fault, I feel certain), and sometimes the flash didn't fire at all. I quickly found that the flash communicated better with my RX10ii, and I used that camera most of the time. I would appreciate any advice you might give me on how to set up the "on camera" flash.

I shot in RAW, using shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed at 1/60, bouncing the flash off of the ceiling and walls. I started with a low ISO of 200 but moved ISO to 800 by the end of the night. I thought that my flash and fast lenses made the use of higher ISOs unnecessary.

I intentionally did not use "AF Assist", which would have shined a light immediately before shutter release and made focusing much faster. I felt the light beam would be a distraction. This was probably a mistake.

After a night of playing with my cameras and being frustrated with the flash, I collected my compensation, a piece of birthday cake (which I believe everyone else got as well), and I went home with low expectations.

When I first glanced at the photos the following morning, immediately after import to my computer, panic struck. Almost all of my photos were too dark, and a large number were totally black.

I rarely use the exposure slider in post-processing, but I found in some instances that increasing exposure was a life-saver. Noise was very manageable. I had to remove a lot of small lights and other distractions from all shots with the window in the background, and I tried to remove as many ribbons as possible. I cropped many of the shots to eliminate people in the background and the drinks most people were holding when I photographed them.

To my surprise and in spite of my fumbling around, the photos were very good. They aren't works of art, but they are fairly complementary portraits documenting attendees of the event. Here are a few samples.

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Just Trying To Focus Loc: Jackson County, Michigan

lwerthe1mer wrote:

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from last weekend that I awkwardly stumbled through.

I really blew my first experience as a group, probably 35 years ago. I was shooting with a Canon fTb. To shoot flash, the shutter speed had to be set on 1/60. Somehow I inadvertently moved the shutter speed to 1/70. Each picture was 1/2 what I wanted to shoot and the other 1/2 was black. My photos were unusable, and I was embarrassed.

35 years later, I guess memories of my photographic blunder had faded. I was asked to be the group photographer at a friend's birthday party. The experience was quite an adventure.

The party was in a long and narrow room, at night, with large picture windows facing a street, with views of a "lit up" shopping center with lot of car headlights and taillights. To make matters more challenging, the room was decorated in part with mylar balloons floating at the ceiling. The balloons had long, colorful ribbons hanging to perhaps 5 feet over the floor (about shoulder or face level on most people).

In a relatively small room containing 60 or 70 people, I assumed my mission was to simply photograph the faces of everyone in attendance, typically in groups, and to photograph the birthday cake.

I brought both of my cameras to the party, a Sony a7ii with a 35mm f2.8 Zeiss lens, and a Sony RX10ii with its built-in Zeiss zoom lens. My flash, a Youngnuo 560 III, which I used in the shoe on top of the cameras. The flash did not communicate well or consistently with either camera (my fault, I feel certain), and sometimes the flash didn't fire at all. I quickly found that the flash communicated better with my RX10ii, and I used that camera most of the time. I would appreciate any advice you might give me on how to set up the "on camera" flash.

I shot in RAW, using shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed at 1/60, bouncing the flash off of the ceiling and walls. I started with a low ISO of 200 but moved ISO to 800 by the end of the night. I thought that my flash and fast lenses made the use of higher ISOs unnecessary.

I intentionally did not use "AF Assist", which would have shined a light immediately before shutter release and made focusing much faster. I felt the light beam would be a distraction. This was probably a mistake.

After a night of playing with my cameras and being frustrated with the flash, I collected my compensation, a piece of birthday cake (which I believe everyone else got as well), and I went home with low expectations.

When I first glanced at the photos the following morning, immediately after import to my computer, panic struck. Almost all of my photos were too dark, and a large number were totally black.

I rarely use the exposure slider in post-processing, but I found in some instances that increasing exposure was a life-saver. Noise was very manageable. I had to remove a lot of small lights and other distractions from all shots with the window in the background, and I tried to remove as many ribbons as possible. I cropped many of the shots to eliminate people in the background and the drinks most people were holding when I photographed them.

To my surprise and in spite of my fumbling around, the photos were very good. They aren't works of art, but they are fairly complementary portraits documenting attendees of the event. Here are a few samples.

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from las... (show quote)

I can imagine your sigh of relief!! These are great shots. And "they" will never know the difference!

WessoJPEG Loc: Cincinnati, Ohio

lwerthe1mer wrote:

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from last weekend that I awkwardly stumbled through.

I really blew my first experience as a group, probably 35 years ago. I was shooting with a Canon fTb. To shoot flash, the shutter speed had to be set on 1/60. Somehow I inadvertently moved the shutter speed to 1/70. Each picture was 1/2 what I wanted to shoot and the other 1/2 was black. My photos were unusable, and I was embarrassed.

35 years later, I guess memories of my photographic blunder had faded. I was asked to be the group photographer at a friend's birthday party. The experience was quite an adventure.

The party was in a long and narrow room, at night, with large picture windows facing a street, with views of a "lit up" shopping center with lot of car headlights and taillights. To make matters more challenging, the room was decorated in part with mylar balloons floating at the ceiling. The balloons had long, colorful ribbons hanging to perhaps 5 feet over the floor (about shoulder or face level on most people).

In a relatively small room containing 60 or 70 people, I assumed my mission was to simply photograph the faces of everyone in attendance, typically in groups, and to photograph the birthday cake.

I brought both of my cameras to the party, a Sony a7ii with a 35mm f2.8 Zeiss lens, and a Sony RX10ii with its built-in Zeiss zoom lens. My flash, a Youngnuo 560 III, which I used in the shoe on top of the cameras. The flash did not communicate well or consistently with either camera (my fault, I feel certain), and sometimes the flash didn't fire at all. I quickly found that the flash communicated better with my RX10ii, and I used that camera most of the time. I would appreciate any advice you might give me on how to set up the "on camera" flash.

I shot in RAW, using shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed at 1/60, bouncing the flash off of the ceiling and walls. I started with a low ISO of 200 but moved ISO to 800 by the end of the night. I thought that my flash and fast lenses made the use of higher ISOs unnecessary.

I intentionally did not use "AF Assist", which would have shined a light immediately before shutter release and made focusing much faster. I felt the light beam would be a distraction. This was probably a mistake.

After a night of playing with my cameras and being frustrated with the flash, I collected my compensation, a piece of birthday cake (which I believe everyone else got as well), and I went home with low expectations.

When I first glanced at the photos the following morning, immediately after import to my computer, panic struck. Almost all of my photos were too dark, and a large number were totally black.

I rarely use the exposure slider in post-processing, but I found in some instances that increasing exposure was a life-saver. Noise was very manageable. I had to remove a lot of small lights and other distractions from all shots with the window in the background, and I tried to remove as many ribbons as possible. I cropped many of the shots to eliminate people in the background and the drinks most people were holding when I photographed them.

To my surprise and in spite of my fumbling around, the photos were very good. They aren't works of art, but they are fairly complementary portraits documenting attendees of the event. Here are a few samples.

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from las... (show quote)

I think there great.

cmc65

I also think they are fine. Just another testament in favor of shooting raw.

sailorsmom Loc: Souderton, PA

Very nicely done shots, lwerthe1mer!