Article by Paul Knebel
Night club photography is perhaps the hardest type of photography the ‘everyday’ photographer can do. The lighting in a night club is impossible to control as unlike in a studio, the photographer is not in control.
Night clubs, particularly in Manchester (Where I take pictures) and other major clubbing cities, love photographs of their clubs and people enjoying themselves. These are the best people to market your night club photos to, they are likely to give you free access and more perks just for being a photographer, read more…
Although I prefer Indie music and bands, to take the largest variety of photos I need go in as many night clubs as possible. This is easier than it sounds as most promoters love photographers to come into their night clubs as they act as a form of free promotion; Myself and the photographers that I employ (voluntarily) are able to get into most night clubs in Manchester by using my company name, xoog.net, which is a known name in the local night club industry. Using a promotional site like xoog isn’t required however it always serves as a backup; There should be a similar company in your area that will be guaranteed to be looking for more photographers, however if there aren’t feel free to get in touch and you could take pictures yourself under the name.
Shutter PriorityTv Mode on Canon cameras, Shutter priority allows you to manually select your camera’s shutter speed. It is best to use this mode in night club photos because a trained photographer will know that Aperture priority (Av mode on Canon cameras) will hold the shutter open for too long and your photos will result in lens shake.
Hand shake will be an issue with night club photography as you are unable to use a tripod. However the traditional rule (on non-IS lenses) is that your shutter speed should be close to that of your focal length. For example if i was taking a picture at 18mm then my shutter speed should be about 1/20s. I beg to differ. I feel that the minimum shutter speed for a camera is 1/8s, yes… that slow. I tend to range my shutter speeds between 1/4 and 1/8, very rarely venturing as fast as 1/30s or even 1/60s for dancers, etc.
ISOThe ISO rating you use should be set as high as possible. Trial and error is important because if you set the ISO too high, not only do you get a large amount of noise, but undesired lighting seems to ‘leak’ onto your subjects. I stay around the ISO 400 mark however ISO 800 is generally feasable, although skin tones degrade, I reserve ISO 1600 for pictures of the general crowd to make the scene more vibrant. I believe the ISO is heavily dependant on the camera and lens though as my good friend has a Canon 5D accompanied with an L glass lens, he prefers to shoot at ISO 100 (which would be near-impossible for me in low light conditions).
In conclusion – ISO, Shutter Speed and FEC should each compliment each other. For example if somebody is dancing fast and you would like to take a relatively still photo, you would increase the speed of your shutter, and compensate for the darker image with a higher FEC or ISO. However more detail about this would be another article about night club photos, which I plan on writing.
About the Author
Paul is the Managing Director of xoog, a small manchester based night club photography company. Paul has had numerous years worth of experience in night club photography, focusing on indie and band related night clubs in his home town of Manchester such as 42nd Street Night Club and 5th Avenue
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