What is night time indoor snapshot flash photography?

The purpose of night time indoor snapshot flash photography is to have a light weight hand-held camera gear, that can quickly be switched on and framed to capture snapshots of individuals, groups and even take selfies, while also capturing colorful background ambient light in the club or private party. This type of photography is also known as event photography.

This can be achieved with a digital camera, a wide angle lens and an external speedlight flash. The shooting proces should be swift and automatic, so natural, creative expressions are captured, while also having fun with it. There will not be time for fumbling aound with settings and cumbersome gear.

Configure camera and flash for capturing low light snapshots.

  1. Use a lens, that spans a wider viewing angle around 50°, such as the well known Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM lens.
  2. Set the camera mode to manual and dial in the camera exposure to 1/8s, f/2.8 and ISO 100. This will be the default go-to exposure setting. This should give you a good captura of the ambient background. If this is too bright or too dark for your application, or you have a much different lens, you will want to adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO in that order until the best ambient background is achieved.
  3. Set image review to hold. Subjects will almost always want to see the image, so it might as well be ready for them. Set white balance to daylight. The flash, changing lighting and and mixed light sources will not work well for the automatic white balance. Set light meter to evaluative mode.
  4. Attach the white diffuser to the flash for a slight more soft lighting. Attach the flash to the camera and point it directly at subject. It will usually not be possible to bounce light off walls and there will usually not be time to experiment with bounced light neither. Set flash mode to TTL mode.
  5. If your camera has live preview, your might want to use this. This will usually enable automatic eye tracking and make it easier to compose some shoots. The downside of this is decreased battery life.

Photograph individuals, groups and even selfies, while also capturing colorful background lights.

You can now grab your camera and walk around and do night time indoor snapshot flash photography. You can quickly capture and photograph individuals, groups and even selfies, while also capturing colorful background lights. The camera immediately holds the image, so you can show it. Just press the shutter to continue shooting.

You might want to adjust flash exposure and aperture as necessary.

  1. Adjust flash exposure compensation as necessary. If people are much brigher than grey, the flash might need more power. If people are much darker than grey, the flash might need less power. The reason is, that the camera will try to power each scene grey, so this should be compensated for. You might also prefer a lighter or darker appearance for effect. You will usually want to adjust flash exposure compensation in 1/3 stops, such as 0.3, 0.7 and 1.0.
  2. Adjust aperture as necessary. If you will be photographing groups, you might want more depth of field. This is done by adjusting the aperture and ISO in the same amount of stops, so the camera exposure remains the same. If you want 1 stop from f/2.8, then change to f/4.0 and ISO 200. If you want 2 stops from f/2.8, then change to f/5.6 and ISO 400. The aperture dial usually moves in 1/3 stops, but remember to turn the ISO dial the same amount, so the camera exposure remains the same.

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