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Playing with speedlite - C&C welcome.

mjoshi123mjoshi123 Registered Users Posts: 216 Major grins
edited June 3, 2012 in People
This is first time I'm trying to use off camera speedlite along with one mounted on it as master slave. Here is result from first set - C&C welcome, this one was taken as a random shot rather than posing this little guy, just after we were done with evening prayer. So the ash you see on forhead is from that. The red background is no backdrop or anything, it is my wife standing behind him wearing red t-shirt :)

testExposure120530MG4902-XL.jpg

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    divamumdivamum Registered Users Posts: 9,021 Major grins
    edited June 3, 2012
    So... if thats' you behind him, who was manning the camera? :D

    You need to watch your aperture/depth of field. I love shallow dof shots and don't mind when only one eye is sharp, but this one's a bit too different between the two eyes even for me :)

    The lighting is nice, however and it's a nice candid snap of him. I'm curious, where were the two flashes? To me, this has the effect of one flash bounced off a wall or ceiling; I'm not getting a sense of two lights (even though I can see the catchlight in his camera left eye).
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    mjoshi123mjoshi123 Registered Users Posts: 216 Major grins
    edited June 3, 2012
    divamum wrote: »
    So... if thats' you behind him, who was manning the camera? :D

    You need to watch your aperture/depth of field. I love shallow dof shots and don't mind when only one eye is sharp, but this one's a bit too different between the two eyes even for me :)

    The lighting is nice, however and it's a nice candid snap of him. I'm curious, where were the two flashes? To me, this has the effect of one flash bounced off a wall or ceiling; I'm not getting a sense of two lights (even though I can see the catchlight in his camera left eye).

    Thanks for your comments, My bad, one behind is my wife not me I need to edit that part in original post. I was one playing with camera. I had 580 on camera and 430 on 1/8 on his right side. I personally like shallow DOF effect, on this one point of focus was below his left eye instead of between two eyes as it was more of as he turned around and image was shot instead of posing him.
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    ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,917 moderator
    edited June 3, 2012
    Overall, there's a lot to like here and I think you're on a good track. I think the shallow DOF works well. But like divamum, I think that portraits need sharp eyes. As for lighting, I feel as if it's too much. Maybe between a 1/3 and 2/3 of a stop too much on his cheek (camera right). It looks washed out to me.

    Do you diffusers on your flash? A diffuser could be as simple as a Stofen or as big as a compact softbox.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
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    mjoshi123mjoshi123 Registered Users Posts: 216 Major grins
    edited June 3, 2012
    ian408 wrote: »
    Overall, there's a lot to like here and I think you're on a good track. I think the shallow DOF works well. But like divamum, I think that portraits need sharp eyes. As for lighting, I feel as if it's too much. Maybe between a 1/3 and 2/3 of a stop too much on his cheek (camera right). It looks washed out to me.

    Do you diffusers on your flash? A diffuser could be as simple as a Stofen or as big as a compact softbox.

    Thanks for your comments, this one was not done with any diffuser but I'm going to play with it. Here is one question I've for people who more often use off camera flash/storbe. How do you set the power on your secondary light ? I tried to make secondary light more powerful than primary by changing ratio to 1:2, 1:4, 1:8 etc but it actually didnot make any improvement in light coming from secondary flash. Is there anything else I need to do withing secondary flash to control flash output ?
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    ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,917 moderator
    edited June 3, 2012
    I typically use manual settings and depending on the distance/situation, I fire them as master/slave or using radio receivers.

    If you're in for a bit of reading, you'll find lots of info here http://strobist.blogspot.com/.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
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    mjoshi123mjoshi123 Registered Users Posts: 216 Major grins
    edited June 3, 2012
    ian408 wrote: »
    I typically use manual settings and depending on the distance/situation, I fire them as master/slave or using radio receivers.

    If you're in for a bit of reading, you'll find lots of info here http://strobist.blogspot.com/.

    Thanks for this link and your input. I was using as master slave in this instance but main flash was ETTL (I think that is one reason why it shows little bit more brighter than required).
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