I had to do similar for my daughter's 40th. It was indoors in a huge private room of a pub. I had a K5 with a Tamron f3.8, 28 - 200 that I used at high ISO without any trouble. A great big flash, even fired at the ceiling can make you a bit of a nuisance if you are sidling round trying to be unobtrusive! Otherwise, complete strangers were totally happy to have a camera pointed at them. The fact that it's a 'posh' camera and you are seen to be working the room labels you THE photographer and you can get away with almost anything. RAW is useful, however because room lights can play hell with the white balance no matter what you try to do.

The over-processing works very well with close shots of bits and pieces like these. There certainly appears to be a lot of top-end stuff there.

I like your project. These things are always so much more vibrant when told by someone with a stake in the place, whether or not they actually live there.

Based on your photos I have finally ordered a large soft box to hand hold a flash and will also be getting wet and muddy knees before long !

Sombody will be utterly delighted with these bellows. I can't praise them enough and if you have a good M42 lens such as a Jupiter 11A you can use a K adapter in it too. I used it to take the delphinium seedlings in the gallery a day or so back. (Don't be put off by those double release cables - you only need them for Spotmatics and the like)

Lovely shots. Thanks for sharing them

Thank you for your kind words -- I think a lot is due to the lens rather than me.
The grey mottled effect on the 'studio' shots is crumpled kitchen foil sufficiently far back to be well out of focus. The lighting was with a super penlight gadget called 'the illuminator'. Amazon sell them for about £24. Bit expensive for a penlight but they really are the business!

If you have any lillies those little ****s will lay eggs under every leaf joint and the larvae eat the lot whilst hiding out under an inverted pile of their own excrement. The beetles look pretty, but they are vermin.

Well, according to Nigel, you've got canine noir stars - whatever you might say about them! Super shots.

The old ones are always the best - and he just proved it !