Help wanted please.

Help please.

I believe I have stated before on the forum my lack of flash knowledge. Just never liked to use flash. Now I find I have to.

Recently purchased a Pentax AF540FGZ on Ebay, it came with a Gary Fong Diffuser. It appears to work just fine in the house, with and without the GF attached.

Problem I am having is in a medium size steel building with ceiling height of around 15-18 feet and fluorescent lights placed in no particular order.

I was using a Sigma APO 70-300mm Lens. With the GF attached it was hopeless, images way too dark. Tried without GF and still too dark. Moving around the building didn't change things too much. I ended up forgetting the damn flash and got real good images. The flash was set to PTTL Auto.

At the end of this month they are having a City Halloween Party in this building for a bunch of little rugrats and I have to take pictures of them stuffing their little mugs with candy. I would like to get all the lurid details of the feeding frenzy.

I know I am going to have to use flash at times, as some area's in this building will be set up to scare the little buggers out of their wits.
I also want to be far enough away so as I get a more natural shot.

Any suggestions, or flash lessons would be very welcome.

The odd thing is I have used flash once before in this same building, crowded with people, with a Minolta 360 Flash on a 7D and Sigma APO 70-300mm with no problems.

Thanks for your help. RG.

RG,
You must read this first: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4950

Matt

Mattmatic.

Thanks for the info.

I probably will not be taking any set poses, it will all be on the fly. So I assume it will be faster to use just Auto ISO and AV.

There will be too many different scenes to use "non intuitive" method, although this sounds like a great way to go. I will have to try this.

I guess if worse comes to worse I will fall back on natural light, no flash.

It's kind of odd really, over the years I have concentrated on natural light images almost 100%. In fact I have only used flash once in the last 4 years and that was with my KM 7D and have never used any other additional lighting.

Some of the so called bridge camera's do a much better job in low light with no flash. In fact there is a great article (Not regarding flash) about an award winning pro using Olympus C8080, C5060 and C5050 Point & Shoots. <http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6468-7844>

I guess it's not about the camera, lens, or flash. Just about talent.

Thanks again, RG.