EX1 party pictures

One of the common uses of digicams is at parties. Although I've had the EX1 for three months now, last Tuesday was the first time that I used it to take party pictures. I variously used the face recognition and the center focus modes, sometimes with flash and sometimes without (mostly with). Apart from a few shots in the evening where the flash was running out of range, the on-board flash did a very good job of illuminating the scene in such a way that it was not always easy to tell whether flash had been used.

This was a birthday party, and the first picture, cropped from a much larger original, is of the birthday boy, who just turned 80. This was taken outdoors, with flash to produce a fill-in effect. The second picture is your typical indoor small-group shot, again with flash. You'll notice that the background is not black, as it has a tendency to be with flash shots. The third shot is the most flash-y looking (it required adjustment of levels), but still avoids the black-background effect.

My conclusion: the EX1/TL500 makes an excellent party camera.

Bob

very nice pics and people!

Hi Bob.

One thing that usually makes me cringe is viewing party pictures taken with flash. Your 3 pictures have turned out very well indeed. I particularly like the lighting balance you achieved in the 3rd picture, his is excellent. How did the battery stand up using flash at a party?
RMW487.

I think the portrait image in the 1st picture has a good lighting balance too.

Thanks. The camera does a good job of balancing available light and flash. I took about 180 pictures, most of them with flash, with some time spent looking a the pictures, and the battery held up fine. (I do carry a spare battery, just in case.)

Bob

RMW487 said:

Hi Bob.

One thing that usually makes me cringe is viewing party pictures taken with flash. Your 3 pictures have turned out very well indeed. I particularly like the lighting balance you achieved in the 3rd picture, his is excellent. How did the battery stand up using flash at a party?
RMW487.

Click to expand...

Nice party photos, but it doesn't look like the flash fired on the 2nd shot, you can see the shadows around the eyes caused by the overhead lighting, and the tungsten colour is more dominant.

Wonder what happened there?

Bernie

I agree that it doesn't look like a flash shot, but the exif (read with two exif readers) says that the flash was fired. More than a minute elapsed between the previous shot and this one, so it's not that the flash didn't have enough time to charge up. The previous shot in the sequence also had the flash on according to the exif, and looks about the same. I think maybe the flash effect was just very subtle, only slightly reducing rather than eliminating the shadows around the eyes, and not overpowering the tungsten lighting. I did a flash/no flash comparison previously, and the effect was pretty subtle--see http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1001&message=35386825

Bob

bernieraffe said:

Nice party photos, but it doesn't look like the flash fired on the 2nd shot, you can see the shadows around the eyes caused by the overhead lighting, and the tungsten colour is more dominant.

Wonder what happened there?

Bernie

Click to expand...

i love the first picture. great shot

"Missing image file"

Something wrong with your image hosting.

Robert Deutsch said:

My conclusion: the EX1/TL500 makes an excellent party camera.

Click to expand...

Yesterday I put my hands on a copy of EX1/TL500 in a brick-and-mortar shop. The question arose: is it comfortable to handle? The camera is so small and there is not much surface to grip. There was however an anti-theft wire attached to it, so it was really possible to try its handling.

--
Iván József Balázs
(Hungary)

No pics

Sorry. Since the original posting was almost a month ago, I thought anyone interested in them had already seen them, so I deleted them from the pbase gallery as part of periodic housecleaning.

Bob

puttin said:

No pics

Click to expand...

Sorry. These were posted several weeks ago, and I assumed that people would no longer be interested in them, so I removed them from the pbase galleries as part of housekeeping.

Bob

Vitali K said:

"Missing image file"

Something wrong with your image hosting.

Click to expand...