[slip]

when I did my first (and latest) wedding shoot with my k10 bouncing the flash worked great... until they turned the lights down low and the camera had a hard time to lock focus. when it did and the flash fired, the people already moved,70% of the shots were garbage... good thing for taking tons of shots with digital
anyone how the same or simular problem? if so how did the light the subjects without blinding/distracting them?

any thought welcomed

[wedgetail]

What lens are you using ,

[johnyates]

Use a wide angle lens, or your zoom set to a short focal length. Lock your focus to 5 feet. Set your aperture to f/8. Situate yourself as close to 5 feet as you can to the dancing couple and pretend your camera is a point & shoot. Use flash, either bounce or direct. DOF with a shorter focal length will make up for your less than precise focus.

Back in the old days ca. 1980's I used this method when shooting wedding receptions. I used masking tape to tape my focus and aperture ring and a Vivitar 283 on the blue auto setting.

[HawaiianOnline]

Use a wide angle lens, or your zoom set to a short focal length. Lock your focus to 5 feet. Set your aperture to f/8. Situate yourself as close to 5 feet as you can to the dancing couple and pretend your camera is a point & shoot. Use flash, either bounce or direct. DOF with a shorter focal length will make up for your less than precise focus.

Back in the old days ca. 1980's I used this method when shooting wedding receptions. I used masking tape to tape my focus and aperture ring and a Vivitar 283 on the blue auto setting.

+1 on this. Presetting your focus and the aperture at least lets you estimate about how the DOF will be. The only other way I know of is to bring some kind of small spotlight to allow the AF to work, but a bright spotlight can irritate people a lot. The following Prom photo was at 10mm, 3s (to get light streaking since teenagers here like this), f/10, ISO 100 and I believe that I had the AF360 set for auto.

[Culture]

Before I hit the manual can I ask how do you preset your focus? How is it that 3s with people moving does not show blur?

[maxfield_photo]

The "shutter speed" is more like 1/10,000th thanks to the T1 flash duration.

[HawaiianOnline]

The "shutter speed" is more like 1/10,000th thanks to the T1 flash duration.

Yup, the flash freezes the people, and the 3s gets the background and streaked lights. If you want the background to be "relatively" blur free, then shoot from a stable position like a tripod or a beanbag on the stage or whatever's convenient (although you should probably use the 2s timer to get it at blur free as possible.) In regards to presetting the focus, you can use the scale on the lens to get close, and set the aperture high enough to get a deep depth of field so you get everything that you want to be in focus. You just have to estimate about where this will be. You can use site like DOF Master to calculate the approximate DOF at a given aperture and distance for a particular lens and body. For my settings, a Pentax DA 10-17mm @ 10mm, and an assumed 10ft subject distance, DOF Master gives a DOF of "infinity". Also, I wanted to "spotlight" on the center of frame, so I set the flash to 58mm zoom IIRC.

[Deiberson]

there is blur. just not on the parts of the image that the flash actually hit.