Christmas Lights & People

[JC Civic]

I am by no means a pro photographer (or anything close) so I have a question for you.

I am trying to take pictures of my son with some christmas lights infront. I am having a real hard time getting the settings right so that I can see my son but yet have the lights glowing as well.

I am borrowing my mom's camera which is a Nikon D60 and I also have an external flash(Speedlight SB-400)

Can anyone give me any pointers, tips, or step by step directions?

[89coupe]

Originally posted by JC Civic
I am by no means a pro photographer (or anything close) so I have a question for you.

I am trying to take pictures of my son with some christmas lights infront. I am having a real hard time getting the settings right so that I can see my son but yet have the lights glowing as well.

I am borrowing my mom's camera which is a Nikon D60 and I also have an external flash(Speedlight SB-400)

Can anyone give me any pointers, tips, or step by step directions?

No flash, use a tripod, manual settings. Do you want your son in focus and the lights out of focus or both in focus?

[KKY]

you mean the light is between the camera and your son? how far is the light from your son? how is the surrounding light condition? indoor or outdoor? what lens are you using?

I recently took some picture of a friend's kid with some out of focus christmas lights in the foreground. it was indoor and the surrounding was pretty bright. Can't remember the exact settings. I likely used a flash tilted upwards with a bounce card attached.

The shot was difficult to compose and didn't really turn out as good as i've hoped. but the exposure was pretty good.

[JC Civic]

Originally posted by 89coupe


No flash, use a tripod, manual settings. Do you want your son in focus and the lights out of focus or both in focus?

I want my son in focus. As for the lights I would like them in focus but if not that is ok too so long as either way they look lit up

Originally posted by KKY
you mean the light is between the camera and your son? how far is the light from your son? how is the surrounding light condition? indoor or outdoor? what lens are you using?

The flash is on the camera but can be tilted in other directions so it's not flashing in his face.
I can take them any time of the day so any kind of light conditions. They are indoor but we have lots of windows so I can use natural light, indoor lights or no lights. I have a couple different lenses

[AccentAE86]

I have an idea of what you want but I'd be doing it with a bunch of lighting gear like extra flashes, umbrellas, flags, and snoots to pull it off... which probably isn't at your disposal.

It would help immensely if you could post up a picture of what you're trying to achieve. So even if you think it sucks, take a pic of your son and the lights set up just how you want and then we can give you the best instructions we can on helping you get the shot you want.

[89coupe]

Here, I took a couple minutes to do an example as to what I'm thinking you want.

Basically I used the snowman as the subject and my christmas tree as the lights.

I did 5 examples using different apertures. The first being F11 at 30sec of exposure, no flash, on a tripod. The last photo is F2.8 at roughly 5.5sec of exposure.

You can see F11 keeps both the lights and the snowman in focus. F2.8 only focuses on the snowman leaving the lights blurred, giving a nice DOF.

I hope this helps you.

[The_Rural_Juror]

I'm sure that anyone with a heartbeat can stay perfectly still for 5.5 to 30 seconds.

Sorry Mr PhotoPro, short of some photoshop magic, a flash is most likely necessary.

[89coupe]

Oh well, I tried. Maybe your kid is good at keeping still.

[djayz]

5.5 seconds is likely doable, 30 however it a long time to stay perfectly still.

Always worth a shot at 5 seconds though.

[muse017]

If you have a speedlight then try to do "Slow sync"

[89coupe]

This is 1sec of exposure, I could have even gone less and just upped it in the RAW file afterwards. I'm sure he can stay still for 1sec.

F2.8 1' ISO 100 Focal length 28mm

[89coupe]

To take it to the extreme, here is F11 at 1600ISO and 1' of exposure. I had to filter out the noise in Digital Photo Pro to make a final product.

You now have both the foreground and background in focus.

[JC Civic]

Yeah no way he can stay still for very long at all. Let alone even stay in one position very long.

Like I said I have no idea how to do anything...it's not my camera (and I forgot to bring the manual) so I don't know how to change half of the settings.

If you have a speedlight then try to do "Slow sync"

How would I do this?

F2.8 1' ISO 100 Focal length 28mm

F11 at 1600ISO and 1' of exposure

I can change the ISO no problem(easy enough to find) but how do I change the F?

When I have it set in manual mode it has:
1/6 (what should this be set to? I can change that no problem) F5.6 (I can't figure out how to change that)

A few pictures(I'm just trying to figure out the settings in these pictures so the pose/background/etc suck in most of them)


too dark?



too yellow?


was taken on auto durring the day. Kinda blue but the lights are lit up.

[KKY]

manual here
http://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/..._ennoprint.pdf
Look on page 56 of the pdf file.

Looks like you still need more light. I would use that SB400 you have.

Shoot in raw will help solve the "too yellow / too blue" problem, since that will give you the ability to adjust white balancing afterward.

[89coupe]

Originally posted by JC Civic
Yeah no way he can stay still for very long at all. Let alone even stay in one position very long.

Like I said I have no idea how to do anything...it's not my camera (and I forgot to bring the manual) so I don't know how to change half of the settings.

How would I do this?

I can change the ISO no problem(easy enough to find) but how do I change the F?

When I have it set in manual mode it has:
1/6 (what should this be set to? I can change that no problem) F5.6 (I can't figure out how to change that)

Switch your camera to manual.

On my camera which is a Canon, I hold the AV button down and use the little sliding wheel just behind the shutter button to change the aperture.

Change your shutter speed to 1"

You can try just using the AV mode on your camera and shooting without the Flash, give that a try, I suggest using a Tripod.

Make sure the focus is on your baby, and not the lights. You could also use a lamp to shine on your babies face to light it up more. Shoot in RAW so you can adjust things after.

Up your ISO to about 800, this should help with the light without getting too much noise.

[89coupe]

Now that I know what your setting looks like, I'm going to give it a try tonight using a stuffed animal...LOL

[Kloubek]

Those are beautiful pics 89coupe.

And JC Civic - I see what you're trying to do. Nice effect!

[rage2]

If you're shooting RAW, and there's *decent* amount of exposure on the subject and the lights are well lit, you can fix it post processing by bringing up the exposure on the subject.

If those samples is what you're shooting, you can definately get away with no flash and a ~1 sec exposure.

[soupey]

if u want the lights, i'd say use large aperture + off camera flash from the side or bounced off ceiling from side, focused on eyes with bulbs out of focus. from the photos ive taken i'd say soft bokeh in background/foreground when focused on eyes turn out best.

and while shooting my nephew i'd say that anything under 1/60 is next to impossible to get a still photo. would be best to stick atleast around 1/80, babies move a LOT!

if you choose to use flash directly, use something to diffuse it, or else it'll be too strong, and likely will wash out the christmas light bulb colours.

or just slap an adult sized santa hat on him

ahem.













those were all taken with off camera flash, would've been better if i used something to diffuse the light, but it basically lit up the baby in at an angle in front of a bright background...plan was to crop out the background later, but other than some harsh shadows here and there, i think some turned out pretty well.

[rage2]

If I had the images in RAW, I could do a WAY better job.

Original


White Balance + exposure corrected:


Stick with the slowest shutter speed possible without introducing motion blur, no flash, shoot in RAW with the biggest aperture, and post process!

Unless you have an elaborate setup, I'm not a huge fan of using flashes due to how unnatural the picture looks. You'd be surprised at what you can do without a flash .