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09/03/2010 08:14:21 AM · #51 |
| Been reading this and trying to learn also. I just bought an SB-600 and need some advice. I'm shooting a band in a bar tonight and I can go two ways. No flash, crank up the d90 to iso 1600 or so (which really isn't *terrrrible*) - or I can stick the thing on program mode and flash away. I just have a feeling they will all look terrible if I do that. I'm using a tokina 11-16 wide angle and can walk right up to them all I want so that's not an issue. I'll prob do both, but any advice on what to do with the flash? Was planning on angling it upwards towards the ceiling. There may be a few lights on them, but nothing direct. |
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09/03/2010 08:20:54 AM · #52 |
| Thank-you Wendy for starting this thread! I have had my 580exII since April and never use it. Never understood it. :( I hope to try some of these ideas and maybe now some of it will make some sense. :) |
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09/03/2010 08:29:53 AM · #53 |
So I poke my head in this thread thinking this was going to be something along the line of red shoe diaries... sexy and fun!.. meh.. I think I'll pop over to college kids and birth control.. lol (j/k - this thread IS interesting even if it isn't sexy)
Message edited by author 2010-09-03 08:30:16. |
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09/03/2010 09:32:34 AM · #54 |
Originally posted by Lockke:
Been reading this and trying to learn also. I just bought an SB-600 and need some advice. I'm shooting a band in a bar tonight and I can go two ways. No flash, crank up the d90 to iso 1600 or so (which really isn't *terrrrible*) - or I can stick the thing on program mode and flash away. I just have a feeling they will all look terrible if I do that. I'm using a tokina 11-16 wide angle and can walk right up to them all I want so that's not an issue. I'll prob do both, but any advice on what to do with the flash? Was planning on angling it upwards towards the ceiling. There may be a few lights on them, but nothing direct. |
If you can shoot flash I would go with that. You could set it up to get some artsy silhouette shots, back light works really nice with bands. Then depending on their outfits I would set the flash from the front sides, if they are wearing hats you would want to put them lower and angled up. Shoot Raw if you can especially since white balance can be a pain especially if they are using stage lights. I would also consider taking your long fast lens with you to get some tight head shots and some artsy shots like just the hands on the guitar or the bass player slapping out notes. Good luck with it. |
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09/03/2010 10:03:12 AM · #55 |
If I made mistakes on the EC/FEC thing someone please correct me. As I said, I am a manual shooter and rely of full manual and a Sekonic L385 for nearly 100% of my flash work. I only occasionally turn the Vivtar 285HV into Auto mode (not TTL) when on camera.
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09/03/2010 10:04:43 AM · #56 |
Originally posted by jminso:
Originally posted by Lockke:
Been reading this and trying to learn also. I just bought an SB-600 and need some advice. I'm shooting a band in a bar tonight and I can go two ways. No flash, crank up the d90 to iso 1600 or so (which really isn't *terrrrible*) - or I can stick the thing on program mode and flash away. I just have a feeling they will all look terrible if I do that. I'm using a tokina 11-16 wide angle and can walk right up to them all I want so that's not an issue. I'll prob do both, but any advice on what to do with the flash? Was planning on angling it upwards towards the ceiling. There may be a few lights on them, but nothing direct. |
If you can shoot flash I would go with that. You could set it up to get some artsy silhouette shots, back light works really nice with bands. Then depending on their outfits I would set the flash from the front sides, if they are wearing hats you would want to put them lower and angled up. Shoot Raw if you can especially since white balance can be a pain especially if they are using stage lights. I would also consider taking your long fast lens with you to get some tight head shots and some artsy shots like just the hands on the guitar or the bass player slapping out notes. Good luck with it. |
Thanks dude, I'll try some of this. Silhouette not a bad idea.
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09/03/2010 10:14:00 AM · #57 |
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:
If I made mistakes on the EC/FEC thing someone please correct me. As I said, I am a manual shooter and rely of full manual and a Sekonic L385 for nearly 100% of my flash work. I only occasionally turn the Vivtar 285HV into Auto mode (not TTL) when on camera. |
I've only shot in manual mode for things like painting with light & double exposures using flash & covering the lens. So you'll have to ignore my ignorance on the matter. I'm very willing to try... I'm just making sure that I understand what I'm trying.
I'm going to try experimenting today with the following situation:
My son, sitting in a rocking chair. Large picture window with soft ambient light coming through on his left side. (It's overcast and drippy here because a hurricane just went through.) I want to play with the flash for filling the shadows on his right side so they're not so harsh.
How would you start when doing everything in manual? I'd like the set the aperture pretty wide for a shallow depth of field. So let's say that I use a 3.5. I believe that lvicari said to then set the shutter speed to a proper exposure for the ambient light and then add in the flash at 1/4 or 1/8 power. Why wouldn't I try just using the flash compensation instead of adjusting the power?
Would you set it up differently?
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09/03/2010 10:29:40 AM · #58 |
Originally posted by vawendy:
How would you start when doing everything in manual? I'd like the set the aperture pretty wide for a shallow depth of field. So let's say that I use a 3.5. I believe that lvicari said to then set the shutter speed to a proper exposure for the ambient light and then add in the flash at 1/4 or 1/8 power. Why wouldn't I try just using the flash compensation instead of adjusting the power?
Would you set it up differently? |
Well, first off, if I were shooting Av mode, I'd likely leave the flash in TTL and use FEC to adjust flash output. It just makes more sense than shooting Av with manual. This gives us a certain amount of control, but still leaves some important stuff to the camera in a fairly difficult lighting situation for a computer.
But, let's say we do it in full manual. Set the aperture to f/3.5 for the DoF we want. Now, we can manually control the shutter speed for more or less ambient light. And with the flash in manual mode, we can adjust power output and/or distance (inverse square law) to lessen or increase the amount of fill. Also, might want to bounce that flash off of poster paper or something to diffuse it.
We now have full control of the situation, not leaving anything to the camera. We can get exactly what we want.
Message edited by author 2010-09-03 10:33:38.
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09/03/2010 11:51:10 AM · #59 |
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:
Originally posted by vawendy:
How would you start when doing everything in manual? I'd like the set the aperture pretty wide for a shallow depth of field. So let's say that I use a 3.5. I believe that lvicari said to then set the shutter speed to a proper exposure for the ambient light and then add in the flash at 1/4 or 1/8 power. Why wouldn't I try just using the flash compensation instead of adjusting the power?
Would you set it up differently? |
Well, first off, if I were shooting Av mode, I'd likely leave the flash in TTL and use FEC to adjust flash output. It just makes more sense than shooting Av with manual. This gives us a certain amount of control, but still leaves some important stuff to the camera in a fairly difficult lighting situation for a computer.
But, let's say we do it in full manual. Set the aperture to f/3.5 for the DoF we want. Now, we can manually control the shutter speed for more or less ambient light. And with the flash in manual mode, we can adjust power output and/or distance (inverse square law) to lessen or increase the amount of fill. Also, might want to bounce that flash off of poster paper or something to diffuse it.
We now have full control of the situation, not leaving anything to the camera. We can get exactly what we want. |
Ok -- I went and played a little with this in mind, and my first problem appears to be that I can't change the power level on the flash if I'm running it remotely. I can change the FEC, but I can't change it to 1/4, 1/8 power, etc. That mode button doesn't seem to work when I'm running the 580 as a slave. Am I doing something wrong?
Played around with stuff, though. It's cool that by changing the camera exposure compensation that I can change how much ambient light vs flash is in the picture. I've also played with FEC and moving the flash closer and farther away.
One thing that I've noticed is that other people's flash photos are beautiful, glow nicely, great saturation. When I'm using flash, things seem very flat. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that. Perhaps because I'm not using any type of diffuser when I'm playing with things.
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09/03/2010 12:40:01 PM · #60 |
oh, yes, one other thing:
Is there anyway to see the FEC in the metadata? I haven't been taking notes on what I've been doing, because I thought I could find it all in the metadata. I see the regular exposure compensation, but not the flash exposure compensation.
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09/03/2010 01:01:22 PM · #61 |
playing examples: (sorry that the first two are oof, I set the flower on a chair, and my cat was under the chair, scratching on it.) please realize that with these examples, I'm not worrying about getting a lovely background or an interesting subject. I'm just grabbing whatever I can and plopping it down someplace. I should probably do something a little more real, but I figure the light is going to fall how it falls regardless if I have an interesting image or not. :)
oh, and remember, none of these are adjusted -- these are straight out of camera (other than resizing)
window light:
window light with flash fill on left:
Dialing down the exposure compensation on the camera so that the ambient light didn't play as much into the shot, and moving the flash up above shooting down into the rose:
Adding another speedlight to light the stem.
moving the second speedlight to the other side.
Suggestions? What have I missed that I should have tried? What did I do wrong?
Message edited by author 2010-09-03 13:49:02.
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09/03/2010 01:21:17 PM · #62 |
My favorite is the second one. The only problem with it is a simple one. You've a bit of lens flare. =)
I just like the different colored background rather than the black.
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09/03/2010 03:12:48 PM · #63 |
Well, you can start to see the difference in light with the positioning of your flash. Now its a matter of what effect you are looking for. Personal taste. For this particular subject a softer look might suit it best. The window light and flash on the left is ok. Try moving your second flash in front and slightly less power than your other flash. This will fill in the shadows in the front. Try a diffuser. Try having your front flash as your key light and using the window and flash on left as fill. By this I mean power up your front flash and expose for it so your other lights sources might be a bit darker.
Again try til you see what you like.
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09/03/2010 03:30:33 PM · #64 |
Originally posted by LVicari:
Originally posted by vawendy:
playing examples: (sorry that the first two are oof, I set the flower on a chair, and my cat was under the chair, scratching on it.) please realize that with these examples, I'm not worrying about getting a lovely background or an interesting subject. I'm just grabbing whatever I can and plopping it down someplace. I should probably do something a little more real, but I figure the light is going to fall how it falls regardless if I have an interesting image or not. :)
oh, and remember, none of these are adjusted -- these are straight out of camera (other than resizing)
Suggestions? What have I missed that I should have tried? What did I do wrong? |
Well, you can start to see the difference in light with the positioning of your flash. Now its a matter of what effect you are looking for. Personal taste. For this particular subject a softer look might suit it best. The window light and flash on the left is ok. Try moving your second flash in front and slightly less power than your other flash. This will fill in the shadows in the front. Try a diffuser. Try having your front flash as your key light and using the window and flash on left as fill. By this I mean power up your front flash and expose for it so your other lights sources might be a bit darker.
Again try til you see what you like. |
Thanks for the suggestions -- I greatly appreciate them. I'm finding this all a little odd. I keep thinking that light has to make sense. When look at this photo
I think, you can't have the light coming from above and from the side, that doesn't make any sense! It would be from one or the other. I've spent too many years thinking about natural light, I have to realize that the light can be coming from all over, if I so desire. That's a very strange change in thought -- so I'm quite clueless as to where to position the lights. It's very intriguing. :D
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09/03/2010 04:08:43 PM · #65 |
Dear Diary,
Today I put my tongue on the hot shoe and pressed the shutter release. It was something to do.
Cheers,
Slippy |
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09/03/2010 05:13:04 PM · #66 |
Originally posted by vawendy:
I think, you can't have the light coming from above and from the side, that doesn't make any sense! It would be from one or the other. I've spent too many years thinking about natural light, I have to realize that the light can be coming from all over, if I so desire. That's a very strange change in thought -- so I'm quite clueless as to where to position the lights. It's very intriguing. :D |
There's no reason to change your thought process. Beautiful natural light will always trump an artificial lighting setup where the light direction doesn't make any sense what so ever. Leroy's photo of the girl on the bus is a perfect example of making the light believable by sticking to where the natural light is coming from. Gregory Heisler's photo of Rudy Guiliani is another example of using artificial lights in a way that makes sense to the scene.
It's basically the same thing that applies to post processing. The best edits are the ones that have some sort of logic to them, which is one of the reasons why some many grew to hate the first generation HDR imagery that flooded DPC. You know the kind that produced weird lighting artifacts, halos and shadows that had no rhyme or reason for being there except as an indicator of sloppy editing. Well the same applies to lighting.
Message edited by author 2010-09-03 17:16:20.
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09/03/2010 05:30:35 PM · #67 |
Originally posted by yanko:
Originally posted by vawendy:
I think, you can't have the light coming from above and from the side, that doesn't make any sense! It would be from one or the other. I've spent too many years thinking about natural light, I have to realize that the light can be coming from all over, if I so desire. That's a very strange change in thought -- so I'm quite clueless as to where to position the lights. It's very intriguing. :D |
There's no reason to change your thought process. Beautiful natural light will always trump an artificial lighting setup where the light direction doesn't make any sense what so ever. Leroy's photo of the girl on the bus is a perfect example of making the light believable by sticking to where the natural light is coming from. Gregory Heisler's photo of Rudy Guiliani is another example of using artificial lights in a way that makes sense to the scene.
It's basically the same thing that applies to post processing. The best edits are the ones that have some sort of logic to them, which is one of the reasons why some many grew to hate the first generation HDR imagery that flooded DPC. You know the kind that produced weird lighting artifacts, halos and shadows that had no rhyme or reason for being there except as an indicator of sloppy editing. Well the same applies to lighting. |
I suppose that makes perfect sense. I was just getting giddy with power!
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09/03/2010 06:34:11 PM · #68 |
Wendy, it's inspiring watching you share your experience. You're making want to get off my butt & start a project like this! I've got the book & an SB800, just haven't been motivated to try to wrap my brain around it all.
One thing to keep in mind is that McNally is writing in Nikonese. I'm sure that most of the info applies to Canon as well, but the differences in systems might cause some confusion. I've seen Joe mention Syl Arena as the source for Canon flash info, so you might want to check him out.
I can tell you're having fun. Yay, you! |
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09/03/2010 06:40:24 PM · #69 |
Originally posted by DonnaLu:
Wendy, it's inspiring watching you share your experience. You're making want to get off my butt & start a project like this! I've got the book & an SB800, just haven't been motivated to try to wrap my brain around it all.
One thing to keep in mind is that McNally is writing in Nikonese. I'm sure that most of the info applies to Canon as well, but the differences in systems might cause some confusion. I've seen Joe mention Syl Arena as the source for Canon flash info, so you might want to check him out.
I can tell you're having fun. Yay, you! |
At times it's definitely a lot of fun! At other times I'm completely lost. Sometimes I have those "eureka!!" moments, and everything falls into place. Then other times, the opposite happens and I have no idea why. However, there are certain, basic truths that I'm figuring out. And there's definitely a sense of accomplishment in that. I'm just going to have to make my 15 year old suffer through a modeling session tomorrow. I tried with my 11 year old, but he moves too much. So it's hard to tell what has changed because of the changes I've made, and what has changed because the composition changed, and thus the metering changed.
I highly recommend that people jump in and give it a shot. It's much more satisfying than I expected. And it is fun to be learning again.
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09/03/2010 08:22:51 PM · #70 |
I once read somewhere that natural light is always available and to be able to use natural light effectively then you have become a good photographer. To become a master photographer you must also learn to create and effectively use artificial light.
Something to that effect. |
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09/03/2010 09:33:27 PM · #71 |
Originally posted by LVicari:
I once read somewhere that natural light is always available and to be able to use natural light effectively then you have become a good photographer. To become a master photographer you must also learn to create and effectively use artificial light.
Something to that effect. |
I believe that. If you wait for the natural light, you are extremely limited. If you can create your own light, the world is at your feet.
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09/04/2010 07:16:05 AM · #72 |
Ok, somethings are getting better. (But I'm sure I'm doing pretty weird things to get there.)
I was messing around with lighting a white background and my subject and working on this shot:
(I forgot to take the flower out of it's little plastic tube -- that's why the stem looks funky.) This one is adjusted in Photoshop, because I was tired of posting "unfinished" things :)
When a katydid flew into the house. I put her on a piece of white paper and tried getting a picture. The problem was that I had to have the flash in close to her, so it was too harsh. With the camera close in because of the macro lens, I had to have the flash even closer to have it see the 7D's flash fire to run the slave. I guess if I had the 580 on camera as the master, I could have turned the flash around and had it trigger a flash behind it. I did change the FEC, but there's a limit to how much you can change it.
I also needed a flash to light up the paper (I assume). Would you just use a single flash overhead to light the paper? Or one coming from above and behind shooting towards the subject?
Message edited by author 2010-09-04 09:45:09.
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09/04/2010 10:01:05 AM · #73 |
Dear diary -- it's great having a diary that writes back to me! Thanks for all the great input!
I am really beginning to understand why you have been recommending shooting in manual. When I've been playing around with which light I want to be the dominant light, ambient or flash, I've been dialing down the exposure compensation to take down the ambient light. I keep hitting the limit of -3EV and not getting much change. And then if the photo is overexposed, I can't change the compensation any more.
I'm off to go experiment with manual, now.
Message edited by author 2010-09-04 10:38:31.
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09/04/2010 10:12:38 AM · #74 |
| If you enjoy off camera flash I would suggest radio triggers. I use the Radio Poppers JrX system which is great. I can adjust the power output of up to 3 sets of flashes right from the camera. |
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09/04/2010 10:38:46 AM · #75 |
Originally posted by vawendy:
Dear diary -- it's great having a diary that writes back to me! Thanks for all the great input!
I am really beginning to understand why you have been recommending shooting in manual. When I've been playing around with which light I want to be the dominant light, ambient or flash, I've been dialing down the exposure compensation to take down the ambient light. I keep hitting the limit of -3EV and not getting much change. And then if the photo is overexposed, I can't change the compensation any more.
I'm off to go experiment with manual, now. |
oh wow!! Manual gives you so much more flexibility! On beyond flexibility! I still don't know what to do with it, but I can certainly do more!
For anyone who's following this in order to start learning how to use their own flash -- start immediately with manual! I believed what fotomann_forever, lvicari, citadel, et al were saying. But I thought that it would be a little easier starting in AV, working a little bit at a time, and then expanding to manual. Definitely not the right way to go!
Put that camera on M, people!
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