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10/03/2007 01:21:39 PM · #1 |
My wife and I are doing our first Senior POrtrait shoot this Saturday. The first part of the session will be outside at a couple of local parks. The second half will be inside studio type shots.
Yesterday I drove out to the park to do check out the location and do some test shots with my kids so that I could be more prepared come Saturday morning - knowing where to go and where to setup. Of course - I drove all the way out and didnt realize I had forgotten my flash until I was unpacking the gear. Here are a couple of the images from that shoot.
[thumb]594615[/thumb] [thumb]594612[/thumb] [thumb]594617[/thumb] [thumb]594616[/thumb] [thumb]594614[/thumb] 
This morning I took the kids out to the second park we will be using to scope out that area and do some more test images. Ths time I remembered my flash. We recently picked up some gear ala the Strobist and also recieved a hot shoe cord from  scarbrd. This is really the first time that we have used an external flash outdoors and off the camera. These shots below are only converted from RAW, resized and sharpened. No crop or other editing is involved. I am primarily looking at this as an experiment using the flash outdoors.
[thumb]595051[/thumb][thumb]595049[/thumb] [thumb]595050[/thumb][thumb]595048[/thumb] [thumb]595047[/thumb]
So what I am looking for here are some critiques on my use of the flash and what suggestions you have to make better use of that light. I was by myself so I couldnt do any bouncing with a reflector or anything though we will be able to Saturday as both Aimee and I will be shooting. I know the first round of images are a bit on the soft side even after processing but I know thats due to the light I had to work with in the area I chose. And as good of models as my kids are I know I will (or at least should) have a much better model in our teenager. Both my kids were just chomping at the bit to go and hit the playground.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated. |
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10/03/2007 02:41:17 PM · #2 |
All in all, very nice.
The trick with outdoor fill flash is to try to make it look like you didn't use any flash. IMO the standard TTL exposure for flash is a little hot. I generally back off the flash exposure by 2/3 stop to a full stop. Also keep the ambient light exposure as close as possible to normal. If you underexpose the ambient light and compensate with the flash it will look more unnatural.
I think your flash images are pretty subtle on the flash exposure, and that's a good thing. You might also want to try a white reflector on the oppisite side from the flash placement to give a little light to the unflashed side.
These are just suggestions, more trial and error will get you more comfortable with the fill flash and also be able to get predictable results.
Good luck!! |
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10/03/2007 02:49:32 PM · #3 |
Wish my kids were this excited and energetic when it came to shooting!
They look great
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10/03/2007 03:17:47 PM · #4 |
Get more variety of shots - these are almost all full lenght.
These look to be a lot of wide angle stuff- use a telephoto, 100mm or better, and shoot wide open to blur the BG - the focus should be on the subject more than the landscape. the first one (2870) has a bit of BG blur, good.
The difficulty is then your shutter speed may exceed sync speed...if it were easy everyone would do it!
3 of the last four, with the boy- 2975 shows flash (and shadows from the flash), the last one is the best in this regard, but one thing you DO want is catchlights in the eyes, 2975 has it but the others have little or none (hard to see with the size of images you posted)
They all seem a tad oversharpened, but if that's your style go for it.
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10/03/2007 03:44:18 PM · #5 |
Thanks for the comments everyone. It is REALLY appreciated.
I will sure get more variety of shots. My focus today was working with my Sigma 18-125 and the flash unit. Trying to figure out how much flash I need. I will play around tomorrow some more working on the background and softening the shadows. One of the challenging aspects of my light setup is the 2ft hot shoe cord length that keeps me pretty much right next to my umbrella and flash unit. I may go and pick up 1 more cord to stack (I think I would still keep my control over the flash amount rather than it just going full blown) so I can get a bit further away from the setup and hopefully allow me to shoot at 100mm or so. I need to figure out how far away my flash can be from my subject and still get good results. More and more to experiment with.
The 50mm will get used a lot. Especially for the close ups and head shots. I feel pretty comfortable with that lens without the flash but I still need to play with it using the flash. Overall this is going to be a great day of shooting and we hope to learn a ton and still be able to give our model some decent shots. Her family knows what we are capable of and what our overall experience with this type of work is (minimal). We told them we would do this for free to give us more experience and help build out our portfolio. So far it has been a great learning experience and I dont have any shots of her yet.
Thank you again all for your input. We will post results of Saturdays shoot next week - unless they really suck and then I will see if I can get SC to hide this thread as though it never happened.
And a quick edit of on eof the images from today. -
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