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Off camera flash and umbrella
Antonio Correia
Registered Users Posts: 6,241 Major grins
Would you please be so kind as to drop me a line about these pictures I shot yesterday with 430 EX and umbrella ?
It was the first time I was using the umbrella.
I can say that the umbrella shouldn't be at my right but at my left to begin with. :rolleyes
I have used aperture priority increasing the ISO when the light was not enought to handhold the camera.
I don't know why the photos seem a little orange/red. I know that there was some incandescent light in the room.
I must try again in a different way.
This has nothing to do with Brent's work. His work is super and mine is just beginning.
It was the first time I was using the umbrella.
I can say that the umbrella shouldn't be at my right but at my left to begin with. :rolleyes
I have used aperture priority increasing the ISO when the light was not enought to handhold the camera.
I don't know why the photos seem a little orange/red. I know that there was some incandescent light in the room.
I must try again in a different way.
This has nothing to do with Brent's work. His work is super and mine is just beginning.
All the best ! ... António Correia - Facebook
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Antonio,
I think you did a very nice job.....the lighting is nice and soft and the baby's skin color looks just fine also....as does everyone else in the photos.
Great job just keep practicing.......it will become more and more natural feeling...........
Thank you Arthur.
I will keep practicing, over and over again.
I will repeat the shots some other day in the same room but, probably, at a different time of the day.
Gary
Unsharp at any Speed
Also, what LiquidAir said about your umbrella being too far from the subject.
Lastly, it's a pity there's so much going on in the room. Makes it slightly difficult to find the initial focal point.
The photos are definitely orangey as you said which is obviously caused by the room's lighting. Just play with the curves a bit in Photoshop.
Good luck!
body: canon 400d
lenses: 50mm 1.8 & 10-22mm
Grant Shapiro Design & Photography
Antonio,
I think the white point setting paid too much attention to the bright window, and thus, the rest of the image looks slightly under exposed. Are these images tagged with an image space profile? sRGB, aRGB or whatever? The whitest pixels I see in the baby's left sleeve is only 219, 213, 220 - little too much red and blue, maybe. I assume the sleeve is near to white.
I think you needed about 1/2 stop more light on the baby's face ( - this probably can be corrected easily in the conversion from RAW).
I agree with you that the closer shot of the baby looks a bit warm,and is probably due to the mixture of tungsten lighting and flash. I see this frequently - Flash is balanced at 5600K - but frequently I find I set the color Temp K at about 5200 for indoor shots with significant ambient light. You also have shade - light from the outdoors streaming through this window, which can play a role as well. I think this is why the image on the left looks cooler.
The images are small and I have not attempted to edit their color balance. I suspect a little curve might brighten the faces of the folks sitting on the couch as well as the baby's.
The pixels in the windows are blown highlights, or very close to blown, I would just go ahead and sacrifice a little more of the pixels in the windows, to gain a greater spread of data in the faces of the three people in the images.
My suggestions here are entirely my opinion and are NOT facts ( The pixel numbers ARE facts) . Evaluate my suggestions, Antonio, and decide if they have any merit in helping improve your images of your family.
One thing that I notice about Brent's work, is how carefully, and accurately, he has balanced the flashed foreground with the ambient lit background. He almost always has nice white pixels reading 240, 240, 240 or slightly higher somewhere in his images as well. He makes good use of the entire range of tones from 10,10,10 to 240,240,240. His images are just a touch cool - I think that is due to the flash - I doubt that he is using color filters to warm his flash routinely. I have not examined all his images, but I think the cool quality of the flash is generally accurate in describing his images. I mean this as a descriptive term for color balance only , not a judgement of accuracy or artistic quality.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Huuummm. I can imagine that I like the Rembrant lighting. I MUST try.
I like the butterfly ideia as well.
The 3 people in this room were moving constantly and this is a good excuse why I don't have the right lighting on the baby.
The wife stood up to a phone call and Carlos was all the time around Maria Luisa, who was, in turn, moving around in the room, freely.
Anyway - another good excuse - it is the beginning of shooting babies with umbrella.
I have now a project - assignment, commitement - which is to shoot Maria Luisa as time goes by and another baby still to be born.
When I will be very old, or in powder they will see the photos I shot and will say:
That bustard old man, shot us when we were young !
The kids I am going to shoot are sons of my friend's son (confusing ?).
I don't have grand sons. Not yet anyway.
Look at this sequence:
And thank you !
Hello Gary!
Before these shots I made some test ones I save you the trouble to look at.
Thank you for that tip. I MUST try and try, over and over.
I have shot my share of family candids and I fully understand the dynamics of trying to catch shots of kids and family members as they wander about, completely uninterested in cooperating with the photographers desires. BTDT ( Been there, done that )
I think using the foamie diffuser, and bouncing the flash off the ceiling to raise the overall ambient light level may be easier to do ( the ceilings in this room aren't too high -are they white?? ), than try to capture the directional quality of the light from an umbrella. But that is just my opinion. You will need an assistant to keep the umbrella pointed at the child's peregrinations.
Since you use an ST-E2 to trigger your flash, you know you can control a second EOS flash and adjust the lighting ratio via the ST-E2 without having to walk over to the strobes. Just a thought, Antonio........ I discussed that in my Christmas candid thread last winter. You would not need to keep moving the flash about as much, just alter the lighting ratio between the two flashes.
Think of it this way - Brent is using cross lighting - one strobe opposite the sun; with your TWO strobes, and your ST-E2, you can have the same kind of lighting, indoors, and under your control............
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
What Pathfinder do you think I know, what do you think my knowledge of Photoshop is ?
See what I mean ? I know little of this my friend :cry. I want to learn but I have a slow learning curve.:cry
But let me try to drop a few words of my poor knowledge as I quote your text. The images are not tagged and I hardly know what that means. The sleeves are in fact white.
Shame on me. I don't shoot RAW any more !
The reason is simple: I don't need it. I don't print and I don't know how to treat photos so well that I can take advantage of such a format. I shoot jpg and the files are good enought. Are they ?
It's curious because at the beginning I only shot raw, but with time I quit.
But I perfectly understand that shooting raw is an advantages ... sometimes.
I will be shooting raw tomorrow at down shooting Setubal from the Fortress as I have done before.
May be, as time passes I will learn enought and think to myself: now I am going to shoot raw because I need and I can have advantages on the quality of the photos.
I think I have evaluated your suggestions Pathfinder and I thank you for so much trouble writting all that.
I will remember your good advices from this post as I have from others, which helped me to improve my skills in photography.
Thank you Pathfinder
To be precise at this moment it's 11,31 pm.
I will be very glad to answer to you tomorrow during the day.
Thank you again.
Very nice of you.
I have to chew
Tomorrow.
Thank you Ken.
But the question that comes to my mind at once is:
If "the 430 EX nor the 580 EX have enough power to balance direct sun when bounced off an umbrella" then, which flashes are ?
I suppose the anwser can be: none.
Don't use a flash at all in those situations unless it is used without modifiers.
Choppsky. Good morning.
I am sorry I didn't give you an anwser yesterday night but I have not seen your message ?
The room is a little bit of a mess but it's their home ...
Thank you for the comment and time spent reading and writing.
* The issue of the temperature color can be solved - I hope - reading the white balance with the gray card before I shoot.
* May be - how the hell can I say this, may be ? - it is really better to shoot raw in these situations because I can fine tune the color temperature and aperture among others "things".
* Doing so, I can have more freedom in looking for the best color balance in the picture.
* White point and black point - I have that printed to read somewhere. Where is that paper ? Anyway, Andy has some tutorial on this. Or Pathfinder ? May be davidTo.
But I remember I printed it to be read.
* Next time I need an assistant to move around with the umbrella. I call him/her a slave ! May be my wife or my son.:D
* I have to remember to look at the ceiling but it is white I think. Otherway I would have noticed.
But now that I am remembering the room I think the walls are a pale yellow! In this case it will be another reason to use the grey card for the WB and to shoot RAW.
* The monopod with the unbrella at the end is good to be holded by the slave. Versatility added versus cumbersome tripod.
* Have to remember that Rembrant business.
* Indeed Brant's pics are a bit cold. But very nice.
* Pathfinder told me about controlling the flash from the ST-E2. I still don't know how to do it. I have to read about it on the f-manual and/or googling.
* Pathfinder suggested to get another flash. That seems a good ideia. But no.
I have to learn to control this one before I move to a more complicated scenario.
* I have to go and re-re-re-read Pathfider's Christmas post from last year because I feel there are things I have missed, like controlling 2 stobes at the time, in the distance.
* Kenn told to shoot through the umbrella. Oh boy! More experiments and tests. Good.:D
Thank you all for the contribution for making me think and write about this.
I did some testing of my 580EX with an umbrella as a main light and using direct sun as a rim light. With the flash at full power I was overexposing the sun by about a stop. If the subject has dark hair it works out OK, but light hair can blow out. The upside of coming only a stop short is that if you want to use the 580EX with and umbrella for fill and the sun as the main light, you are golden. However, it is going to be tough to get the light from the flash as bright as the sun. For reference, the 580EX has about 2/3 stop more power than the 430EX.
In terms of other flash options, since all that's needed is an extra stop of power, something like the Quantum QFlash almost certainly has enough extra power to pull it off easily. One you start looking at studio-style strobes there are lots of options.
Remember that I am just an amateur !:D
In fact I have asked today how to follow a photography course in Lisbon.
Just for the sake of learning.
To begin with I have to submit my portfolio (my site actualy) and go to an interview to show and talk about my work.
At least, the interview I am going to, because it will give me a feeling about my value, or the lack of it.
The course is on Saturdays all day, Sundays mornings and Tuesdays late in the day. So, I can go. 1/2 year.
This would give me some knowledge of photography and of people. (!)
This "business" of Art is sometimes very elitist.
May be beeing an Architect for 29 years now, is an advantage ...
Have a nice and pleasant week end.
To you all: Ken, Pathfinder, Arthur, Gary, and Grant:D
I was rereading this thread for a letter to Wheresdavid about fill flash, and came across this thread again. I agree with LiquidAir's comment that most battery powered speedlites cannot overpower direct sunlight and convert sunlight to fill - although this is entirely a function of distance from the flash.
With a bounce umbrella you have to be almost three feet from the apex of the umbrella to fit the shaft, light-stand and flash in between the umbrella and subject. I have not tried this with a white shoot through umbrella that can be positioned within 1 foot since the flash and shaft are pointing away from the subject - shoot through umbrellas can give VERY broad apparent sources of light because they can be so close to the subject.
Without the umbrella the Vivitar 285HV, the Canon 550ex, and I am sure, the 580ex and 580ex II can all over power sunlight when closer than 4 feet as demonstrated in this post
The information is here ---
***********************************************************
For grins, I set up a 550ex for comparison
Full Power Drect Flash Zoom setting at 50 mm 550EX triggered by my Sekonic 358 to a PW - ISO set at 100 for all readings
2 feet f 45
2.8 feet f 32
4 feet f 20
5.6 feet f14
8 feet f 10
11 feet f 7.1
***********************************************************
The full thread about the strength of the Vivitar 285HV vs the 550ex is here
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
i have to read all this very carefully.
Thank you.
This has been my conclusion as well. Using 580EX direct, I have power to spare when working in direct sun. This shot:
was taken with at 300mm at maybe 40 feet using a 580EX for fill. However, I usually factor in about 4 stops lost power when working with an umbrella which leaves me a bit short even at close range in direct sun. However, I recently got a pretty good softox at Calumet which appears to be more efficient. I am going to have to do some testing on it to see what can be done.
I'm eager to hear your results on the Calumet as well!
-Jon
40' is a rough guess. He was in the water and I was shooting from as close as I could get on the shore.
Here's the deal on the soft box vs. umbrella efficiency. Our competitors are a Calumet Illuma 30"x40" in one corner and a Photek 42" convertable umbrella in the other corner. I mounted my 580EX in each of them, triggered by a Pocket Wizard and set to manual and full power. Then I tested the power using my Sekonic flash meter by hunting for the proper distance for two exposures: f/11 and f/5.6.
The softbox could hit f/11 at a very workable distance of 36" measured from its front surface and was hitting f/16 at around 24". This makes it possible to overpower daylight for a headshot and just about match it for a full body shot. f/5.6 was achieved at a distance of 80" which is quite workable for group shots.
The umbrella was hitting f/11 18" from the flash head and just barely beat f/16 with the meter right next to the flash head. 18" inches close but possible if you want to keep the stand out of a tight headshot, but f/16 is out of reach for any real world shot. However, f/5.6 is way out at a workable 78".
The conclusion:
The major difference betwen the softbox and the umbrella is at close range where the sofbox has a stop or more effective power. At distances of 6 feet or more the umbrella and softbox are pretty well matched. This, presumably, is because the lengh of the umbrella's stem limits how close you can work to the reflecting surface.
I would bet the "shoot through" approaches the softbox in brightness and exposure apertures as a result - have you ever tried this, LiquidAir?
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
I can try it out tonight as the umbrella I was using is convertable.
I rarely use a shoot through umbrella close to my subject because of issues with lens flare. When I do, I normally zoom the flash out to 105mm so I only light the center of the umbrella. When I use my 42" shoot through umbrella up close I find only about the center 20" or so actually contributes any light to my subject because of the curvature of the surface. The outer edges of the umbrella light the room and create flare which are both effects I would rather avoid so I try cut down on how much light hits them.