Exposing for night markets

[rpcrowe]

I am traveling to China in April. IMO, one of the most interesting characteristics of Chinese Culture is the night markets where everything is sold, especially food. I have seen very few really good images of this type of market and think that it is because the vendors and food are most often lit from behind with incandescent (and occasionally flourescent) lights.

I want to use flash but, do not want to make it look like the stall has been lit with a flash. I am thinking that I want to use flash primarily as a fill to illuminate the vendors.

I will be using a 40D camera and a 550EX flash which I intend to bounce into a Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro (since there is no ceiling off which to bounce).

I am thinking that I will shoot RAW in manual exposure mode with the flash in E-TTL. I am also thinking that I will place a filter over the flash head to balance out the color temperature (orange for incandescent and green for flourescent) between the flash and the ambient light. Then I can work with the color temperature of the entire image.

The IS on my lens will allow me to get a sharp imagery at relatively slow shutter speeds and I don't think that I will have to go below 1/60 or 1/30 second at f/2.8 or increase my ISO far above ISO 400 or 800. The vendors are not moving significantly so IS should really help. Of course, I'd rather have a bit of noise rather than a fuzzy image. Noise can be corecetd with post processing.

I am open for suggestions. I have inserted an image which illustrates the type of photography I am talking about.

[brucep]

Will someone else be with you who could hold your flash for you?

I had almost no notice that I was going to take this shot in our caves. I just grabbed a flash on the run. My flashes each have a PocketWizard FlexTT5 attached, and I keep a miniTT1 in my bag. Our caves are VERY dim and the subject asked me to take his photo as he posed himself as suggested by his own photographer (I really dislike the pose). I handed my flash off to one of our PR people and told them where to go and I squeezed off this quick shot.

Again, I hate the pose, but using IS and 1600 ISO at .6 sec. shutter speed, I used ambient light for fill (this also showed the scene well behind him) and the direct hand-held ETTL flash worked as a main light. Yes, I'd have loved to have time to put a softbox on the flash, but this was an un-scripted stop in the caves. BTW, his own photographer's shot didn't turn out nearly as well.

I think this off-camera flash would work well with the rest of your plans.

[Sage]

Bruce, is that Jack N********? If not, he's a dead ringer for him. I've looked three times and I keep thinking it's him. It's so freakin' funny your image turned out better than his own photographer's did. I bet you were very pleased. I apologize for hi-jacking this thread. Please disregard the interruption. ~~Peg

[brucep]

Sh-h-h... Yes, that's him. Let's not put his name in this thread (to avoid search engines). I posted the photo just to show the lighting. I'm not supposed to tell anything about his visit yet.

And now, back to the thread which is in progress...

[tanman707]

hmmmm! Is that really Jack Nicholson??? just kidding, would recognize that face anywhere.. nice photo!

[rpcrowe]

When shooting using programmed mode and a -1 flash exposure I ended up with this type of exposure. Canon 30D, 420EX flash bounced into Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro.... I shot these using ISO 640 and the general exposure was around 1/60 second @ f/4 which was really, available light with some flash fill.

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[Skippy]

Your pictures came out good. Hope you had a good trip. According to the picture you used as an example these maybe came out just a tad brighter than what you really wanted, but it did not ruin them.

Skippy