Any help from the pros?

[LauraBean]

I've spent all week photographing karate students in special training classes. The first several classes were at my son's karate school, which I thought was not very good light until last night when I did a class in a hotel ballroom. Ack.

I am using my Canon 40D and have a 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 and 50mm f/1.8. I only have the onboard flash, which doesn't have much reach, so I've not used it much. The room is dimly lit from overhead (incandescent bulbs, I'm pretty sure).

All my pictures are underexposed--I'm realizing that this is probably because everyone is wearing white uniforms (except the really important guy, who is in all black). There is a lot of motion, naturally, so my aperture has to be really wide to give me a fast enough shutter speed to prevent a lot of blur.

Is this hopeless without a good flash? I have another class to photograph Friday night in the same room, and then a banquet with demonstrations Saturday afternoon.

[katrinak]

How high are you bumping your ISO? That may be your best bet in bad lighting.

[LauraBean]

Thanks, Katrina--I'm using ISO 800 or 1600. My underexposure issues mean they are a little noisy--but I can't go any lower and still get somewhat decent shots.

[maryannwise]

well, how'd the pics come out? did you get a flash?

[LauraBean]

Nice of you to ask, Mary Ann! I didn't get the go-ahead on the flash from the dh, but I did a better job my second night at this venue. I did a custom white balance, which helped a lot, and I mostly used the 50 mm lens. I only pulled out the 28-135 for the group pictures, where I used a tripod.

At the banquet the other official photographer was also shooting, and he has a nice flash, so I felt more relaxed knowing he was probably getting shots I wasn't, and again I concentrated on using the 50mm and shooting candids.

This experience has definitely bumped the flash to the top of my wish list, though, along with a faster wider-angle lens! Thanks again for asking.

[Elaine]

Two thoughts:
1. Set the light meter by pointing it at something close to the image but not the white uniforms and with a shutter speed at about 500+, you should be able to adjust the exposure.
2. Fix it in Photoshop by duplicating the image and then playing with the blending modes--such as soft light- to brighten the image.

[sam ellis]

Another suggestion is to use manual and set the best aperture and speed that you see you can use. The white will throw the reading out each time if you don't

[Allan]

Hey LauraBean,

I’m Allan one of Best Buy’s online community agents. We frequently review online postings to assist individuals with their technical issues. I am all too familiar with this challenge in photography. It sounds like you don’t have enough light, and your instinct that all the white uniforms are causing the images to be underexposed is probably correct.

It doesn’t sound like you have enough light to achieve shutter speeds necessary to stop the action, and the only real solution to this is to get more light to the sensor. Stopping a fast moving subject will require a fast shutter speed (at least 1/250th of a second or faster) so the shutter speed is not an option. There are only two other real ways get more light to the sensor and that is to either put more light on your subject with a more powerful flash, or you will need to get a lens with a wider aperture (2.8 or wider). It should be much more economical to purchase a powerful off camera flash than a wide aperture lens.

In regards to your images being underexposed your instinct was most likely correct. A cameras meter is designed to average a scene and expose it so all the parts of the scene combine to what is called middle gray (the midpoint between absolute black and absolute white). If you’re shooting a mostly white scene the camera will expose it to be gray which will underexpose your images. One way to get around this is to set the camera to manual and either shoot at a wider aperture or slower shutter speed than recommended by the cameras meter. If you’re not comfortable with shooting on manual you can also set the cameras exposure compensation to overexpose your images.

I hope this information helps, and if you ever need any further photography advice I am the digital imaging expert on Best Buy’s® forum.

Allan
Best Buy® Community Connector
http://www.forums.bestbuy.com/bb/