It depends what you define by a 'rave' and what part of the world you're in.
Manual mode, short zoom, flash - try the strobe mode on the 550EX too. If you set the flash to manual and down by -2EV, shutter at about 1/30 - 1/50 and aperture to as large as you can (f/8 - f/22). Oh, manually focus based on DOF.
Why not go to one with a pocket full of single use cameras, just to get a feel for it (and for peoples' reactions)?
I have been taking pictures in night clubs for a while now (since April). I've posted comments on some of the technical aspects of this in a couple threads here on dpreview in the past. See, for example:
Shooting in clubs and raves, you really need an external flash like the 420EX or the 550EX (I use the 550EX, personally); the built-in flash is anemic in such situations. The AF assist light will make a dramatic difference in AF ability. I use a D30 and have great success with AF. It's only when I've got the 70-200 on the camera and shoot things outside the range of the AF assist light that I have trouble and resort to manually focusing. Problem is, these places are so dark that you can't really see through the viewfinder to know if you're in focus or not. So get to know your environment; find some places you will routinely take shots from and figure out the focus distance so you can manually focus by the focus meter ring on the lens.
That picture was a half-second exposure with the flash configured for 2nd curtain sync. Flashes fire for a very brief duration. On a long exposure, the flash does not light for the entire exposure. Normally, the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure, once the shutter is fully open. With 2nd curtain, the flash fires at the end of the exposure, just before the shutter closes again.
I going to buy the 550ex tomorrow and shoot my first rave later in the evening.
Good start
BTW I forgot to mention the 2nd curtain sync, but luckily Christopher did. Think of it as the flash being used to stop the motion where the subject > ends upIt depends on what you want to shoot. What is the story ? I can go to a club and shoot a dark, depressing story with shots of shady drug deals and people off their faces in corners and dirty toilets. On the other hand, I can shoot my friends (ah, what a lovely turn of phrase) having a good time.
So our subjects and the set-up are both different, but the results are usually 'positive'. Depending on the ambient light and the ISO you can get some cool stop-motion looking montages.Different clubs go different ways. Glam clubs, everyone wants a nice posed shot showing how well they've primped themselves up. Clubs that are more about the music you can get a lot of good big club shots, plus DJ shots. Stuff I've posted, Vision and Crobar would be more about the music, for example. It's inevitable that you'll have a set of posed shots, though, as you take pictures of your friends, or the girl you think is really hot, etc. For the Tiësto show at Vision, it was also Halloween so people were dressed up so I spent some time wandering getting pictures of people in costumes, and then of course you get all the people around them seeing you taking pictures and they want theirs taken as well.
No, this is a hobby of mine. I've always enjoyed night clubs, photography, and beautiful women. So now I get to put all three together. And it has it's perks; get to meet a lot of people (including the big DJs that roll through town), get in for free, free drinks often, etc.I do it for the fun - Christopher appears to do it for a living
So our subjects and the set-up are both different, but the results
are usually 'positive'.
--That picture was a half-second exposure with the flash configured
for 2nd curtain sync. Flashes fire for a very brief duration. On
a long exposure, the flash does not light for the entire exposure.
Normally, the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure, once
the shutter is fully open. With 2nd curtain, the flash fires at
the end of the exposure, just before the shutter closes again.
In that picture, and others like it, the foreground subject is
largely in the dark. You've got strong club lights in the
background, however. The long exposure allows one to capture the
dramatic impact of the background club lights and then the flash
comes along at the end and freezes in the foreground.
I shoot a lot of stuff this way. It allows one to get the ambient
glow of the club in the frame yet have a well-defined foreground
subject. If you look at the shots of the DJs taken from within the
booth at Vision, probably 90% of those are taken using this same
technique. The long exposure means you do get motion blur in the
background, although with the club environment that often isn't a
problem as the background is largely dark and won't register anyway
(excluding the club lights, which are swirling around anyway and
you WANT motion in those).
Here's one I like of DJ Tiësto that illustrates this point:
That was .5 seconds with the 14mm lens held inches above the
CDJ-1000, hence the distorted perspective. (I'm also a big fan of
the perspective games you can play with really wide angle lenses.)
The ambient club lights are no-where near as dramatic as they are
in the one of the girl dancing, but still lends a nice glow to the
image, retaining the atmosphere of the club.
Chris
I have a couple Offshoe Cord 2s, but I do not use them in the clubs. I use a Stofen Omni-bounce and aim the flash at about 45 degrees to the subject. I get pretty decent results in this configuration; people aren't blown away as they are when I don't angle and/or don't have the Stofen on.
I use E-TTL and have it stopped down 1/2 (plus lose another full stop from the Stofen, so E-TTL is actually making the flash work harder to compensate). With the Quantum Turbo Battery, I can fire burst runs and the flash recycle time is not an issue.
Quick Flash meaning where the flash allows you to fire before it's fully recycled (yellow pilot instead of green)? If so, no, since I don't have issues with recycle times given the external battery pack. I've never used either of my 550s without an external high-voltage battery. Ever.
He's got some great stuff there. Thank's for the link; I've bookmarked it.
I shoot 95% of my stuff auto-focus with no issues thanks to the AF assist light on the 550EX. The stuff that doesn't AF is that which exceeds the range of the AF assist light when I've got the 70-200 lens on the camera.
Chris
I don't use manual. I use E-TTL, and make heavy use of FEL. When I change the batteries out on the 550EX (you still need AAs in it for it's internal brains; the external battery is only to recycle the flash capacitor), it often looses the -1/2 stop flash compensation I've dialed in and it's immediately noticable in photos when I review on the LCD.
I use P and Tv modes. P for when I want to freeze people, as I know the camera will pretty much always choose 1/60th at f/2.8, but if it gets hit by a powerful strobe at the instant I take the picture, it can compensate. But I effectively consider this the same as manually setting 1/60th at f/2.8. For the timed exposures I use Tv mode with the time dialed in and let the camera pick the aperature, which is almost always f/2.8 unless you've got a bright stobe or stong laser going in the frame.
