Advice needed

[areid]

Some of you might have seen my PAD for last night:

http://www.pbase.com/image/26788508

It was taken at a huge carnival in town in conjunction with the Houston Livestock and Rodeo show. Anyway, I had set out with hopes of coming back with much better stuff than I actually did. Even though I'm not happy with it I still put up a gallery of some of the best of the worst:

http://www.pbase.com/areid/my_carnival_experiment

I would love to get some advice, especially from those of you who have some skill in these type of lighting situations. If you can look at my EXIF data and tell me if I was shooting at the best settings for the situation I would appreciate that too. I did use a tripod on many of the shots

Thanks in advance.

[simonkirk]

A very nice image, my advice would be to step the iso down and slow the speed when taking pictures of the rides, this will give a nice dynamic light effect, the same with people, i would have found some people stood still and tried to get the people moving about them to blur.

Hope it helps

Simon
http://www.pbase.com/simonkirk

[polyvios]

I'll go with Simon on this one. Carnivals are a great place to get motion shots, the rides are usually packed with colored light bulbs etc. If freezing motion is what you are after, it might be a good idea to get to the carnival early! Before the sun has set completelly to make use of the advantage of the remaining sunlight.

Slow sync flash works great when capturing people in motion as well.

It kind of all depends on the photo you're trying to get, there's never just one way of going about it!

If you care to be a bit more specific, like explain what effect you're trying to get, maybe we can be of more help!


Polyvios

[areid]

Thanks for the tips. I agree about getting there a little earlier before the sky had turned black. I may try to get out there again sometime.

As far as dropping the iso, wouldn't that cause the pics to be too dark?

Someone else had mentioned panning with the rides. I knew of that technique but completely forgot about it last night. I'm kicking myself now (and it hurts).

I'm still trying to figure out some things on my camera, especially aperature.

Thanks again for the input.

[ziggers]

If you drop your ISO make sure that you slow your shutter speed down to make up for the light you're losing with the slower ISO speed. That will also give you longer shutter times to make those ferris wheels seem like spinning wheels of light and fire