I was in Ottawa briefly this weekend for AAron's 30th birthday video dance party. Angela couldn't make it because it would have taken too much time away from her thesis, so this time I made the journey alone.

The party was a blast, and AAron had a ton of cool music videos. A lot of the old high school crew were there, including a surprise visit from Mark Jarvis. So I got to chat with old friends, and I also got to meet some interesting new people as well, which was cool.

I also decided to use this party as an opportunity to try out some different flash photography techniques. AAron had set up an amazing light show, as always, and there was a lot of dancing, so the setting was perfect. For the photographically minded out there, the next paragraph details the procedure I used.

First, I brought out my trusty 10-22mm lens and set it to an ultra-wide 10mm to get as much stuff in as possible. I chose a midrange aperture (f/8) which meant that at 10mm pretty much everything was in focus. I set the camera to manual and chose a shutter speed that would underexpose the photo by about one full stop without the flash. Then I turned my flash on and set the flash compensation to underexpose the scene by one full stop. (The goal here was to have half the light coming from the flash, and half coming from the light present in the room.) At this point I wanted the shutter to be open for one full second, so I adjusted the ISO (and shutter speed) accordingly so that I would maintain the same exposure that I had set above. The ISO wound up being 400, which was quite reasonable.

OK you can start reading again. Once the camera was set up, all I did was hold it above my head, pointed in the general direction of the room, and then I took the photo while moving the camera around. The result is that the flash froze all of the motion in the scene, so that the people wouldn't be blurry, but because the exposure went on for much longer and the camera was moving around, all of the ambient lights in the room streaked around and they wind up adding motion to the picture.

I think this technique is pretty good at capturing the mood of a party atmosphere, although it takes a little practice to be able to use it effectively. I only got a few shots that I really liked, but that's the beauty of digital I guess. ;)

I have posted some more pictures from the party on my Picasa site.

Technical details: This was shot with my Rebel XT + Speedlite 430EX + EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm, ISO 400, f/8 for 1 seconds. -1.0 flash exposure compensation was used.

Comments

Wow, that's cool. I'd have never thought that there could be a way to get that
effect. Neat. I'll try to remember how you did it for when I fully understand
all this f stop business and whatnot.

Mike... amazing photos... and great writeup.  Its been too long since I've been
watching your POTW... have to get back into it!

Thanks so much for making the
drive down, and documenting it so well!! :-)

Expertly done!	I love it!

Great pics Mike! 

It was awesome seeing you again, be sure to come back soon!! 

Very cool!  I especially like the ghostly face in the upper right.  You nailed
the exposure quite well too.