David's World

February 21, 2008

Taking photos at an Edinburgh Ceilidh

I've put together some hundred pictures taken at the Highflyer's Ceilidh 2007/08 in Edinburgh the other day. Ceilidhs, the traditional Scottish dances, are rather popular in Scotland. The Highflyer's Ceilidh is held by the three airsports clubs at Edinburgh University: Gliding, Hot-Air-Ballooning and Skydiving.

As every year, the Ceilidh was held in a ball room with funky lighting. That's quite the challenge for photographers, even when you have decent equipment. Most of the pictures were taken with a 50mm f1.8 Canon lens, at 800-1250 ISO, and slightly under-exposed. At f1.8 it's quite a challenge to focus on moving targets, and 1/125sec shutter speed is often not fast enough. As usual, the large Metz flash did its job quite well in the few frames when I used it (bought in the days of film photography, it's clearly overkill when used with a digital camera). In other shots I used Canon's 70-300 IS 4.0-5.6, which never fails to underwhelm me.

I was thankful for the white spotlights, which the technician left on by my request. I ended up staying in the same place for minutes at a time, shooting dancers as they came around to a spotlight. Last year, things were rather red and turned the night into a black-and-white orgy.

Here, I'm leaving 103 pictures in the set, despite technical imperfection, because I know that people will still enjoy seeing themselves and their friends.