Thursday, October 2, 2008

Skeletons & Pumpkins

For the most part I feel that a camera's flash is the equivalent of rain on Halloween night. My older displays in the days before the beloved digital camera's night setting were horrific - bright, flooded, zero-atmosphere, mug-shotty.
Found these two pics on flickr and they came out pretty neat however. Though I'll never endorse taking photos of your haunt with a flash. Never ever.

Image source.

5 comments:

Grim said...

Just another of the many things I have learned from your work... that I need to take better pictures! This year should be a LOT better.

Rot said...

I owe my nice night shots to the camera. Just a basic Sony digital with a night setting feature.
I use a tripod or I sit the camera on the ground or on something steady and use the timer feature so the camera has no risk of moving to avoid blurring. That's it. Key is set the camera low slightly looking up.

Johnny said...

Couldn't agree more.
In fact I hate flash photography in any kind of photos.
I bought Rebel XTi when the baby was born and it is fantastic! You can control everything - even ISO speed.
With manual mode, a tripod and some ambient light and you can do some very cool things.

Unknown said...

I wish mine had a timer mode. The tripod is a must!

Jon Glassett said...

I've got a Rebel XTi myself. Johnny's right: it's really great for low-light shots. I'm looking forward to shooting this year's haunt with this camera. In a lot of ways that's the best part of the night for me.

I hate using the flash as well, but what I've found is that you can do stuff like cover it with colored tissue paper and other translucent materials. When the camera "insists" on activating the flash to get focus, I let it do its thing and then cover it up when I actually shoot. It's literally just a matter of holding something up in front of the flash. You can get some neat effects that way.