Party mode
Xorge taught me this one years ago, and it’s still my favorite setting for snapshots after dark: “party mode.”
The basic concept is that you have a much longer exposure than the usual flash photo (1/60th second, typically), and that lets the background colors really come through. A subtle burst of flash lights up the foreground right at the end of the exposure, but the long shutter lets the low-light background come through much stronger than in the standard faster-shutter flash photo.
Here are two shots showing the difference, taken a few seconds apart with only one setthing change: “S” mode versus “P” mode. They’re both photos of the birdhouse on my Mom’s deck, with Puget Sound and the sun setting over the Olympic mountains to the west.
The photo on the left is in “P” mode (auto-everything), with the flash up, so it’s a 1/60 shutter speed. The photo on the right is in “S” mode (shutter-priority mode, meaning you set the shutter speed and the camera adjusts everything else to match), with a 1/5th second shutter speed. The flash is still up, so it lights up the foreground at the end of the 1/5 second, throwing less total light than in the 1/60th exposure because after that long 1/5h exposure the background has already contributed quite a bit of light to the overall exposure calculation.
As you can see, the longer exposure makes the background come out much more. And you can adjust this all you want — instead of going to 1/5th second, you can simply spin to 1/20th second, or whatever, and press the shutter again.
That’s “party mode.” I use this mode most of the time at parties, and it works great. I’m often surprised at the cool effects. One thing to know is to set “rear-curtain flash” (meaning that the flash fires at the end of the long shutter opening), so that the trailers of light end in the crisp flash-lit image, rather than starting there.
The combination of properly exposed background and flash-filled foreground can create photos with great balance between background and foreground. And if things are moving (the photographer or the subjects), the background can have long trails of light while the foreground is crisp and clear from that rear-curtain flash. I love this setting.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on September 25, 2007 at 2:44 pm Tom wrote:
Cool — I never understood how you got those shots, but it makes perfect sense when you explain it. I can’t do that much with our little point and shoot, and I think a D40 is pretty far down the list right now (faucet repairs, stove, lawnmower, etc.). So I’ll have to watch your blog here for a while. Anyhow, you go to more interesting places than I do — there are only so many dynamic shots of the kindergarten drop-off that you can take before the other parents start warning each other about you.
Hey, have you completed your iPhone trade?