atomicthumbs

remote sensing practicioner

gregarious canid. avatar by ISANANIKA.


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bnuuy
@bnuuy

any advice about shooting indoors, at night, with a 35mm SLR? soliciting tips on film stocks, lens choice, flash or no flash, basically anything lol. I won't have the ability to do a bigass lighting setup (nor do I have the desire) but I'd intend to get some nice candid shots, group photos, and individual portrait style pics if people want them.

my impulse is to bring a fast stock like cinestill 800T or portra 800 & shoot free with no flash, but i'm not sure how well that might play - i also have no clue what lens choices would be good?? i basically shoot everything at 50mm but maybe a wide angle would make more sense, idk idk


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in reply to @bnuuy's post:

that’s a tough situation! You will probably be fighting for sufficient light unless everyone’s sitting directly below a lamp or smthg. +1 on high speed film, tungsten balanced is good if you can get it, maybe pushed 1 stop. 50mm good if you are shooting in a larger room (like a living room), otherwise I’d go with 35mm. flash makes it super obvious that you’re taking pics and gives harsh shadows, but maybe you like that look; up to you :)

Use whatever lens you have that opens up the most. It really depends on the lighting but you might have to go even higher than 800, indoor shooting is much darker than it seems. I've heard the Porta 800 pushes pretty well to 1600 but poorly at 3200. Unfortunately there aren't many options for 1600 and 3200 in color.

I'd intend to get some nice candid shots, group photos, and individual portrait style pics if people want them.

of these things, only one will work out reasonably well. portaits.

iso 800 just isn't enough to take general pictures indoors without a flash. you'll need a very fast lens, like f/1.2, to even hope of a fast enough shutter speed to shoot handheld, and as a result, you will end up with razor thin depth of field.

so although portraits will look quite nice, group shots will end up with most of your subjects being somewhat out of focus, unless you use a slow shutter speed and a tripod to compensate for the tighter aperture. similarly, you might struggle to find the candid shots you want when your depth of field is about 5cm wide.

maybe pushing the film to 1600 may work out for you, if there's bright lights indoors, but you'll end up with high contrast shots and colour shifts. delta 3200 is my go-to film for indoors work without flash, but i'm ok with everything being black and white, grainy as fuck, and looking like it was shot at a punk gig

really, you can't do indoors with film without some sort of flash, and it's not that fun.

for candids, you'll likely end up spending your time adjusting the flash power for the subject distance. for group shots, unless you have a bounce flash with TTL measurement, you'll end up with washed out front fill flash photos where everyone kinda looks like a passport photo.

so my advice? give up on available light photography, get some decent colour film, and shoot with a flash, ideally one that uses TTL measurement so you don't waste time doing the power adjustment, and one with an angled head and a diffuser so people aren't lit like rabbits in the headlights. i mean, unless the vibe you're after is "a 90s disposable camera" in which case get the front fill flash. i've done it for precisely this reason.

then expect to be very unpopular because flash photos piss everyone off. guh.

anyway: as much as it sucks to hear, my advice is "shoot digital indoors, it handles low light way better", and i hate it.

i shoot in this exact situation pretty frequently. my suggestion is 800T or 400D pushed to 1600 (if you have a fast lens, 3200 if you don't). I think 400D pushes better than 800T honestly, you can squeeze 3 stops of push out of it easily and it looks great. Alternatively, go for black and white - HP5+ can go to 3200 (or higher!) very nicely. Delta 3200 is ostensibly made for the exact scenario you're describing, too.

My go-to for shooting lens for that scenario is a 50mm f/1.4 which can clamp down to 2.8~4 while still shooting 1/60 for nice sharp pics. But I also try to get a few shots on my 28mm f/2.8, which can handle 1/30 handheld shots no problem and is great for group shots.

If you just wanna use flash, I'd use an iso 100 film and a 50mm. Personally I feel like black and white film looks better with flash than color film but to each their own.

Pro Tip: Portra 400 pushes to 1600 better than Portra 800. Try it!!

Good luck!

Speedlight on a remote if you can scrounge one, put some kind of reflector on it (I'd just rubberband a card to the top in a pinch) and hold it up whe you take pictures like an old timey newspaper guy. Served me fine for years as a club photographer doing portraits i literally couldn't see while getting bumped around by 300 drunks who also couldn't see where they were going.

50 is going to be pretty limiting in tight spaces, unless it's a barn wedding or something, assume you're going to be shooting your subjects roughly an arm's length away a fair amount of the time

Get as much practice in as possible in a similar space as far in advance as possible ofc, indoor night portraiture is very unforgiving and on film you won't have the opportunity to spend all night chimping and fiddling with your settings

I'm in agreement that you want a flash and one that can do TTL ideally. Unless you ask them to make it a very bright wedding, 800 and even 1600 will be slow for any candid photography, really only useful when you can get people (and yourself) to hold still.

Portra is a very safe choice, and I'd actually consider the 800 even if you're using flash - it will require less flash power, meaning less of a nuisance to guests, and it will pick up more of the backgrounds in open rooms with less manual intervention or blur, avoiding more of those photos where the subject is nicely lit by bounce but they're surrounded by a black void. You pretty much always want to bounce if you've got one flash all handheld. Slower films will do nicely in smaller rooms where the bounce almost certainly illuminates everything or portraits with a backdrop you can light too.

I also agree with folks saying 50mm is pretty tight for indoors, it will force you pretty far back which isn't great if you're in a small space or are also one of the guests and want to enjoy it too. 35 may be better for general purpose for those reasons, but I'd also have a 50-85 short tele available. I tend to go out with either a 50mm alone, or a 35 and 85.