I understand, but i hope you'd be able to show me example of photos of people's face/in action at night without flash.

Don't bother with soft box when you need all the juice you can get. Soft box is only good if you have a very powerful light source, and you need multiple of them since they concentrate the light source and get diffuse greatly by the box, in other words, you lose alot of juice at night with a puny flash and soft box.

Shooting at lighting condition like that with iso400 is laughable, iso400 is good for overcast day but at night, u need more juice...it's all about juice and artificial+ambient light. Really, don't hesitate to shoot at iso 1600, noise is NOT a problem with the D80, a little neat image + unsharp mask will get you VERY usable pictures.

Also take note of flash to subject distance, there's too much room behind the subjects, which explains why the background is so damn dark...you need more than 1 flash in situation like this. Or high iso + large aperture + flash.

Here's one I took 2 days ago in a Jazz festival down the street, it was at night, 10pm or so. To save u the hassles of checking the exif, it was taken at:

-1/80
-105mm (well, thank god he didnt move much)
-iso1600
-f2.8
-flash bounced 70 degree into the tent

I use my softbox with macro shots. Not for events.

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Added on July 16, 2007, 9:29 am

I should have used higher f/stop for a sharper pix. But this is the lighting done with the softbox. This shot was done for fun.

This post has been edited by calvin_gsc: Jul 16 2007, 09:36 AM

Yup, softbox is good for macro and portrait if you have multiple flashes/hot light. I use strobes and umbrellas at home, but it'd probably be better to use softbox/umbrella with hot light if possible. Alot of people don't like to use soft box coz they are huge and take up lots of spaces. I'm not talking about portable softbox though.

This guy here in POTN (Pioti) did a freaking good job with just a 350d + lumiquest soft box + 60mm macro.
EDIT: forgot to post the link
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showth...t=142566&page=6

This post has been edited by AlamakLor: Jul 16 2007, 09:37 AM

Yeah, that setup takes great macro photos!

Sure, in order not to disappoint you.. here are some photos of a lady rocker and her friends from some youth-event rock festival at the Esplanade I took some time ago. EXIF data may not show focal length as I was at times using a manual focus 50mm f/1.8 (stepped down to f/2.x because too soft and bad chromatic abberation wide open):









The very small DOF for lenses near wide-open, and the low shutter speeds due to the lighting conditions make this scene very challenging for me. This body had no Image Stabilisation. Less than 1/5 of all shots were of acceptable sharpness but I shot a lot. No flash allowed at this event.

Many performances do not allow usage of flash or maybe you'd like to steal a shot without being noticed where photography is not allowed. You want to go home empty-handed?

This post has been edited by cjtune: Jul 16 2007, 10:11 PM

Here are a few of mine during my college's Talent Night competition.







One of Dragon Red's lead singer. (Local band)


Used 50mm 1.8d with AF and without flash. Shot at f/2.0-2.8

This post has been edited by calvin_gsc: Jul 16 2007, 10:24 PM

Looks good with the fast prime!
So I guess you used the flash as a matter of choice rather than necessity (too dark/don't want high ISO)?

Well, 50mm 1.8d limits my working range during an event.

it'd be nice to have a 17/-50/55mm 2.8d.

I was using my 18-135mm most of the time, so I have to rely on my flash to take clear shots.

I added a few more photos.

This post has been edited by calvin_gsc: Jul 16 2007, 10:32 PM