Haha, never too late to get the thread going, right?!
Untitled by
Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr
Untitled by
Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr
My roommates ^
Untitled by
Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr
click through my flickr to see moar
What I generally do is use a fast, somewhat wide lens (20-35mm) or a 50 or 85mm for some tighter stuff. I always shoot at maximum aperture, adjust the ISO based on how much ambiance I want to capture and a shutter speed that makes sense (it "makes sense" after some experience). I set my flash to +2/3 FEC - whatever it meters, it will add some more light - this will prevent underexposure and generally make things "pop" a bit more. In some situations you may want to change this, but I'm pretty much locked at +2/3 FEC and I use evaluative flash metering.
If the subject is moving and I want to not get so much blur from their movement and their bright clothes reflecting light and "smearing", I'll boost the ISO and the shutter speed to about 1/40 or so. I generally use ISO 400-1600 and SS of 1 second to 1/4 second - all depends on how the lights are setup at the place and what kind of action is happening - ALWAYS changing settings. Basically, I set everything on the camera manually, but let the E-TTL flash metering do it's thing - it works VERY well in most situations. I don't know what people are complaining about when they talk shit about Canon's flash metering compared to Nikon's
If you're not using a flash:
MiMOSA by
Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr
Crank the ISO to whatever is necessary to stop whatever action the people are doing - 1/80 should be good if you catch the right moment and are steady, but 1/200 is safer. Luckily MiMOSA has a good stage manager (complete asshole...) and brought some REAL lights for this show
- him prohibiting flash was very educational for me - the other guys there who used flash anyway got garbage pictures, and were bitched at
Get in people's shit! Very few people are hesitant to have their pictures taken, some demand it (which is annoying) People cheer when I appear to take pictures - it's kinda neat
If you see something awesome happen, get a picture of it. I'd rather have several shots of different groups of people where I can clearly see how hard they're partying compared to a big, wide shot of a bunch of non-descript people. Utilize the goofyness that wide-angle lenses provide when used up close to get some oddball shots:
Untitled by
Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr
^this guy is fucking WASTED everytime I see him, makes for good pictures.
