flash: overexposed foreground, underexposed background

[angrykitty]

Light has a tendency (grin) to drop off geometrically as the distance increases arithmetically. With color film, you don't have much laddytood, either.

When doing wedding tables, we always shot down from a small step ladder to minimize light fall off. Hard to do with rock crowds, tho.

lol... thats what amplifiers and pa systems are for! but that's a good call, I've been trying to shoot more from climbing up on things lately, but with no way to see my negatives enlarged it's been hard to tell if its helping or not. I have a feeling that it helps the lighting but not the shot...

[angrykitty]

Try slow sync. If you're using a dedicated flash unit, you may have to override its settings.

Set the aperture for the recommended auto flash setting. Take a meter reading with your camera for the background without flash and that will tell you what shutter speed you need to get a normal exposure in the lighting you have, at the aperture required by the flash. Now practically, the sync speed is likely to be too low to stop camera motion, so your options are to use a higher speed and accept that the background will be dark, but not as dark as if you had used the X-sync speed, or you allow for some motion blur, which when used creatively can add some dynamism to the shot.

hmmm... something for when I'm feeling experimental and sober....

i like your bloczki shot on flikr... that was actually the year my parents left the country with my brother and I. memories...