[dkittle]

I've been asked to photograph a birthday party for children. I'm wondering if any of you have advice for photographing children in this kind of a setting - I only have a cat and she spends much of her time sleeping (so she's an easy target). Oh, the lighting in the venue is florescent and my flash (a 360) has decided it will no longer fire on-camera - I expect this will be challenging.

Thanks for any advice you might have!

[little laker]

Either your 50mm f/1.4 or your 77mm f/1.8 Limited should work nicely.
Although the pop up flash isn't the best it should work, although I'd cut a white 35mm canister so it'll easily slip over the flash. It becomes a diffuser this way.

And finally set the white balance manually.

[dkittle]

Thanks, Stu. I actually swapped my 35mm for a 31mm so I might try that out too.

I saw a 'hack' somewhere with a film canister used as a diffuser. I'm going to bring my MZ-5n as a backup camera so I'll modify a canister from one of the film rolls :-)

Does anyone have a recommendation for what focus mode to use? Is it better to try continuous focus if you have the aperture opened up (and thus have a narrow focus area)?

[kenyee]

Get a flash cord and bracket and keep the flash about 1-2' above the lens (this should let you continue to use P-TTL).
Use the ABBC cheapo diffuser or something like it (hope you have low enough ceilings to bounce off).
Get a gel to change your flash color to match the fluorescent lighting.

I recently took photos of a relative's kids birthday party w/ my K10D and it was a humbling experience to say the least. Kids move fast. I had to run the shutter at 1/125 to freeze motion enough. I follow the ways of the strobist, so I ended up using Auto-thyristor mode most of the time...there's no time to fiddle w/ the manual power levels on the flash (that's why you should get P-TTL working if possible).

[Finn]

Holy crap, what a thread title!

[ve2vfd]

Well being a boy scout leader I can tell you I take a lot of action pics of the kids at camps and activities and the one thing I can suggest is TAKE LOTS OF PICS! Expect 2/3 of them will be trashed.

The little devils move when you expect it least, they move fast and they don't really care about your photographic efforts

Another thing I love to do, I'll usually find the most outgoing kid and lend him one of my point and shoot cams (Optio S6) and tell him to go nuts with it. That will always bring in some pretty unpected good pics to add to the album or slideshow I give to the parents.

Pat

[mattdm]

The one most important tip I know for taking pictures of children is: make sure you're at their level rather than shooting down from a on-high adult point of view.

[dkittle]

Sorry if I offended, Finn. No little ones of my own, only nieces and nefews...

To everyone else, thanks VERY much for the suggestions. I totally forgot that I'll have to gel my flash, if I use it. I guess I'm off to the camera store tomorrow!

Don

[aerodave]

Gels are useful, and I use them sometimes. But that doesn't mean you'll definitely need them. They're only important when you're trying to balance flash with ambient light. For normal indoor flash usage, the camera in any of the auto modes (including Av), is likely to set an exposure such that the flash becomes the dominant light source, and is too low for the ambient to register. If the fluorescent light isn't showing up in your shot, you don't need to gel for it.

How to tell if you need to color correct? Put your flash on the camera, turn it on, and see what exposure your camera wants to use. In P mode, it'll likely be something like 1/50 sec, f/5.6. Now turn the flash off, go to manual, and take a picture with those settings. Is the frame black, or nearly so? If it's dark, you won't get room light in your picture when you take the real thing. If you can clearly see the light, you'll have both sources in your shot, and you'll need to balance their colors with a gel.

So I'm not saying you shouldn't get color correction filters. Just be aware that shooting in tungsten or fluorescent light doesn't automatically mean that you need to gel. It just means you will need to gel if you purposely decide to balance your shot for ambient.

[PDL]

I agree with getting down to their level. I have a pair of good knee pads (too much skiing, tennis and rock climbing as a youth - or ute as it were) that I use - belive me it helps. Let the kids see the images right away - let them look through the viewfinder and take a few shots. Get them used to you being close - very close.

Get a fast lens and try to not use flash - up close, even the built in POS will cause pain - real pain. If you have to use flash - get an external flash on a wire and bounce it as much as you can. Flash - in my opinion - gives close in images a fake look, the sun is not on my forehead - at least the last time I looked close. Just do not burn out their retina's.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[dugrant153]

Holy crap, what a thread title!

haha... exactly what I was thinking! hehehe

[dkittle]

I wanted to thank everyone again for your execellent suggestions. It turns out I didn't need to gel the flash (took a test picture first and it was all black :-) ) and I stuck with my 77ltd and 31ltd and the pictures turned out great. Course my legs are sore from all the croutching and crawling, but it was great fun.