need help

[clangsner]

Hi everyone, I am hoping someone can help me. I am fairly new to digital photography and have an important event coming up in a couple of days, that I want to record.
My wife is being honored at a dinner gala as one of Canada's top school principals and I want to record the event. As this is a one time event I only have one chance, so I am hoping some of you with experience in indoor events may be able to help.
All I know about the location is it will be a hotel banquet room, but I don't know how big or how it is lit. I don't know how far I will be from the podium for photographing my wife getting the award. What settings would be a best quess for this situation.
I have a Nikon D90 camera and a 18-200mm 3.5-5.6 DX lens. I know that a flash would be out of the question as it would interupt others at the gala, but may be able to use the bilt in flash.
Basically I want your opinion on ISO, aperature or shutter priority or manual, what white balance, etc..... Also, should i shoot in jpeg or raw or jpeg and raw? I need help as I've never done indoor photography before.

thanks in advance

[donoreo]

You can up your ISO, it will probably be good to 400 without much noise. Before the event, test at home in various levels of light to see how high you can go. Another thing you can try is renting a lens for the event. You can get a fast f/2.8 lens that will help you keep your shutter speeds up and will allow more light in.

I would shoot RAW, then you can adjust the exposure later if you need to. WB, it depends on the light, but in RAW you can adjust that too.

I do not know where you are (I am in Toronto - do not hate me, I only live here, I am not from here ) but you can rent lenses from Henry's.

[jet_kit]

Hi,
Donoreo is right, although in this sort of situation I would be tempted to go for ISO 800 and deal with any noise later. As far as the flash is concerned, this depends entirely on how close you will be (remember the Inverse Square Law from school?). At ISO 800 your built-in flash probably won't be much good beyond about 20M and no less annoying than if you hire some mega-blast unit for the occasion.
If it's a high-ceiling venue, which it probably will be, then bouncing the flash to give you softer lighting won't work as you'll lose too much light in the process.
When my daughter graduated from uni I was sitting in the audience and shot at ISO 800 (no flash) 200mm @ f5.6 and the results were quite acceptable.

[wave01]

I would think that flash would be allowed so take a flash with you. if you cannot use flash then it down to the available light iso 800 should get you a starting point then you may have to up it. Good luck