How do I take good photos at a party or indoor event?

Indoor events combine every difficulty at once. Nothing makes them easy, but a small number of decisions made in advance turn an unusable set of photographs into a good one.

Step by step

1. Accept high ISO.A sharp grainy photograph is a photograph. A clean blurred one is not. Set an ISO ceiling of 6400 or higher on a modern camera and let it work. Noise reduction in current software is remarkably good; motion blur is unrecoverable.
2. Set a shutter floor.1/125 for people standing and talking, 1/250 for dancing, children or anything energetic. Use shutter priority or set a minimum in Auto ISO so the camera cannot drop below it.
3. Use the fastest lens you have.A cheap 35mm or 50mm at f/1.8 gathers around three stops more light than a kit zoom at its long end, which is the difference between 1/30 and 1/250. It is the single most useful purchase for indoor events.
4. Find where the good light is and stay near it.There is nearly always one area — near a window, under a well-lit sign, by a lamp, at the edge of a dance floor — where the light is better than the rest of the room. Position yourself so people pass through it.
5. Bounce the flash if you have one.Tilt at a white ceiling, dial the power down a stop or two, and slow the shutter to around 1/60 so the room's own light records behind the subject. This is how event photography is actually done, and it does not look like flash.
6. Watch out for coloured lighting.Venue lights, uplighters and disco lighting are strongly coloured and change constantly. Shoot RAW so white balance stays adjustable, and expect some frames to be uncorrectable — sometimes converting to black and white is the honest rescue.
7. Get closer and use a wider lens.Wide and close puts people in their setting and works at slower shutter speeds than a long lens. It also means you are part of the group rather than photographing from across the room, which changes how people behave.
8. Shoot in short bursts.Three frames rather than one. In dim light with people moving and talking, the difference between the first and third frame is often the difference between a usable photograph and a discarded one.
9. Take the set, not just the moments.The room before people arrive, the details, hands, the food, people arriving, and the wide shot from a doorway. A set of photographs tells the story; twenty photographs of people holding drinks does not.

Tips

• Turn off the camera's autofocus assist lamp if it is distracting people. It helps focus and it also announces every photograph.
• Black and white rescues frames with hopeless mixed colour and often suits the atmosphere better anyway.
• Keep the camera at chest height and shoot without raising it to your eye occasionally — people stop performing when the camera is not obviously pointed at them.

Common mistakes

• Keeping the ISO low to avoid grain — It forces a shutter speed too slow for a moving subject, so every frame is blurred. Grain is a texture; blur destroys the picture.
• Firing direct flash across a room — The near person is bleached, the middle distance is correct and the back is black. Bounce it or do not use it.
• Photographing everything from the edge of the room — Long-lens photographs of people across a room look distant and detached, and need more light. Move in.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask