Q: Hey man! Your website is awesome! It has everything I need to know about nightclub and nightlife photography, but my problem is flash. I have an old Nikon SB50 DX Speedlight Flash and I would like to take pictures in club. My camera is Nikon D3100 with the kit 18-55mm lens. Is it possible to do this thing with my equipment?
I want to ask you what do you mix in post processing except saturation, sharpen, contrast? Is there way to apply these settings to all pictures I have taken?
A: I'm not that familiar with the Nikon SB50 flash so I can't really provide much input on whether or not this flash is adequate for nightclub photography. However, I did notice a couple of things about it that's worth mentioning. 1) It seems like this flash can only tilt; it can't swivel. Thus, it can only be bounced on the ceiling when shooting in landscape orientation. 2) It uses two CR123A or DL123A 3V lithium batteries. It may require a lot of batteries using this flash in nightclub and nightlife photography. I'm not sure how easy it is to find this type of battery at the stores.
If anyone has experience using the Nikon SB50 DX Speedlight Flash in nightclub photography, please send me a message and I'll update this post with your input.
I do very minimal post processing. Please see my post on post processing for more info. And yes, it's possible to apply these settings to all the pictures. It can be done in Photoshop through actions and it can also be done in bulk in Lightroom. However, these topics are beyond what I cover in nightclub photography since I'm not an expert in using either of these programs. There are many tutorials on the web that do a really good job on them.
It's also worth checking out the Creative Live Calendar to see if there are any upcoming workshops that cover Photoshop or Lightroom. Creative Live also has photography workshops that are worth checking out. They've had some on flash photography that I thought were very useful.
