Photographing a Party

I posted this here because a wedding was the closest thing I found to photographing a party. I started shooting Raw and on manual about 6 months ago. This was the first time shooting a large party. I took some test shots to get my exposure close with the flash. I used spot metering so I could use TTL (not TTL Bal) on my flash (SB-700). My plan was to use flash compensation for any variations in exposure. LOL!!! There was no time to do that, the shot was over and gone!! Because of the multiple rooms and ceiling heights, sometimes I used bounce; but sometimes I had to use direct flash. Also different color rooms with different lighting changed exposure.

What I found was that most of the shots were pretty close and required a quick tweak in lightroom to correct exposure. Is this pretty much the best I can do?? Or is there some other method that would not require processing about half the photos in Lightroom??

I shot at 400 ISO, 1/100 of a sec (gave me just a hint of the ambient light), f/? (set it for the depth of field I wanted), spot focus and metering (forget what the proper terminology is but I think you get it), TTL flash, Flash White Balance, Auto Iso off so I was always getting 400 (again not sure if I am using the proper camera terminology for this Menu setting on my D3100).

Any further suggestions for these type of group photo's, in which exposure settings vary from room to room, would be helpful.

I'll give it a try, but not sure I see any real problem. Other than many images perhaps. I gotta say, where I'm coming from is like returning from a weeks cruise with more than 1000 pictures, in all manner of scenes, many taken on a run, from inside dark cathedrals at high ISO to street scenes to ship interiors to bright pool scenes. If you have two or three hundred, it would seem an hours work ought to do it. Buck up.

I'm teasing of course, but it doesn't sound that bad, and if you shot Raw, you're way ahead. And it really is the fun part. You're going through your pictures for the first time, and just doing what you see they need. Some of the fun is called reminencing. And there is not really much to do other than white balance and exposure, and I would add cropping.

Open all at once into Raw. Your pictures are surely sorted by file name which time-wise, sort into different rooms. Could be the groups are not exactly rooms, but a glance ought to be able to recognize a few groups of similar needs. In each such group, in turn, click the top one, and hold the shift key and click the bottom one, to select them all. In some parameters, they probably all need near about the same thing, which is the idea of the groups. If you need to boost exposure 2/3 stop, one click does all selected. There could be a few need individual or different attention, more than I'm going to admit, but you are closer, and have reduced the count substantially. There will be cases this won't apply, but it will apply often.

If white balance is off in this room, colored ceiling or something, find one with a good white target that gives good results with the WB tool. Is that meaning clear? One click there can apply to all selected in the same group. I'm talking Photoshop and Bridge, you may be using Lightroom, but wherever your Open In Raw menu is, if necessary, there should be a Develop or Apply Previous Change to all now selected, so again, one click. But I just select them all at once, and do the WB click.

In a portrait session, you can even crop them all in one click, and then maybe scoot each one around a bit, but in varied situations, cropping probably does need individual attention. But you probably can improve most of them with a little tighter cropping. Cropping helps many cases. It just takes a second to crop one.

Then before publishing them, go back through them quickly next day, a second look, just to check things.

Next time, when you change rooms (or realize the situation has changed), and you think there will be several more, do take another few seconds on the first one to get it closer. Most of the rest there won't be terribly different.

Spot metering in camera Manual mode is good, because Spot only affects ambient, but camera Manual will not respond, so no harm done. Spot doesnt affect flash exposure, but it does shift to TTL mode, which often eliminates a few problems. The main trick is to remember to reset it out of Spot for the next time out.

Thank you! I think this answered my question which I can state more understandable here; Is it normal that TTL with flash does not completely eliminate the need to tweak things in Lightroom as you shoot a party with different rooms containing different ceiling heights, ambient lighting, colors, etc. I think you pretty much said "No it doesn't" in your post. It wasn't a problem for me since I love tweaking photo's in Lightroom, I just wanted to make sure the camera and flash were responding well.

It just goes to show you though that you have to get out there and shoot pictures to really learn. I had plans to use flash compensation to get it pretty close but in that type of setting when I was taking candid shots, there just wasn't time or the photographic moment was over.

Oh yeah, white balance always has to be given attention later, in any situation. And in such a varied situation, certainly exposure too. Those have such a huge effect, the picture just pops when we get it right. IMO, those people claiming they always get it right in the camera either don't know, or don't care. Or IMO, some are deathly afraid of the thought of computer edit. Sure, we can do that in a studio session, get it right first (at least exposure, but WB is still special), but that's pretty hard out in the real walk-around world. The camera tools are just too crude, and having to decide what it needs before we can even see it doesn't help either.

Flash and bounce are a varied thing too, both WB and exposure. The meter can get exposure ballpark close, but reflective metering simply depends on the scene the camera sees, which varies. The root of the metering system depends on many scenes being about "average", and do in fact meter near a middle tone, but of course, the scene we try is always an exception. . I think a very obvious example of that is at How light meters work . Certainly this is something we need to understand. Metered exposure is going to vary with the scene.


So OK, it does take an hour (or two, depending on how efficient) to correct a couple hundred varied pictures (only a few minutes on 200 studio pictures, all the same lighting). 200 pictures in an hour is 18 seconds each, and 18 seconds is a pretty long time, can do a lot when we get going, esp when many cases allow processing many at once. The Raw tools are so good and so easy and so fast, compared to trying to do it individually at the scene. And we have the overwhelming advantage of actually being able to see what they need. Of course, we do need to get exposure a little closer.

Sure, we do try to get all of them right first, but we never can. And I will admit Raw being so easy and fast and good has made me a little sloppy, at least it is easier (and better and faster) to defer much of until later at home. Still a good try is a good thing too. There is no point of worrying with WB at the scene (other than I do use a white card frequently, certainly in the studio), but sure, we should try to get exposure pretty close. But a stop or even two of correction is no big deal for Raw.

Here is a possible idea for next time, something real easy to do. Put a small white card of palm or wallet size in your shirt pocket. Then imagine this picture is some typical actual indoor bounce scene, a group of people or whatever. This is at ten feet, under a ten foot ceiling.

The White card is simply held in outstretched arm. A kludge, it is not in focus (not a concern), and not precisely the same light, and won't work for direct flash, but it is a good valid white. Correcting this one on the near card is 4850K -10. Correcting it on the distant WhiBal card is 5000K -8 (they are always that far apart anyway). Certainly close enough, can't tell any difference between them. Works even better outdoors in daylight. Then correct all of this situation batch the same.



This is TTL BL point&shoot with a D300. I have corrected it + 1/2 EV (in Raw). Spot metering TTL might reduce that a bit.

I have a white card, I really should pull it out more often. I mostly just adjust the white balance to whats pleasing to my eye in Lightroom. If I use it as you did in your example, I think my eye will get better.