Rebel Fish often gets folks asking her how she gets such fun reception photos with ambient light and great action. Here’s her standard run-and-gun set-up:

Use a relatively wide zoom (she uses her 2.8 16-35 L-series Canon)
Set your camera to manual
Set your ISO to 800
Set your shutter speed to 15
Set your sperture to 3.2-4 ish
Keep the lens relatively wide (closer to the 16)
Point your flash straight up (if you have ceilings to bounce off)
Pull your little white reflector on your flash up just about a quarter inch (If you don’t have one, you can rubber-band a 3×5 card to the back of your flash and have the top of the card extend just about a half-inch past the top of the flash. This will create a nice catch-light in your subject’s eyes)
Set your focus to one-shot (vs servo). This will allow your camera to use the focus beam assist from the flash.

Fire away! Try it at home! Woo!

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