Tree Farm

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been busy and haven't had much time to shoot or post. We went to a tree farm to take some pics a couple of weeks ago. The weather was beautiful--the sun was out and it wasn't too cold. Here's a couple of pics I took with a hand-held 580. They were taken close to noon. In the past, the time of day along with the harsh sunlight filtering through the trees would've wreaked havoc with shadows on their faces. But now that I'm not afraid to use a flash, I'm able to get some decent shots. There's a bunch of flare, but I was having a tough enough time just trying to get a decent shot. Gotta love 4 year olds :)

Simulated sunlight: Follow up

Someone revived an old post in the flickr group that was for a guy selling pre-cut color correction gels. In that thread, there were a couple of links to some .pdf files from Rosco (gel mfg.) The second one was of great interest to me, because it looks like it has suggestions for specific gels to create specific looks! Nice. They have several ones to use to simulate sunsets/sunlight/moonlight/etc. I'm gonna have to test all these out!

Link

Bouncing with fill

I had tried taking pics of the girls while they were putting ornaments on the tree. I thought this'd be another good chance to fiddle around with my lights (much to my wife's chagrin). In the past, I would shoot this with my flash on camera, bounced of the ceiling. The pics would come out decently...


...but I knew that now having multiple lights, I could do better. You can see in the photo above that her eyes are pretty dark. I initially tried lighting this with one flash in a shoot-through on one side of the room, and another flash reflected by an umbrella on the other side of the room. I wasn't too happy with the results and quickly removed the reflective umbrella and instead made that flash bounce off the ceiling. It was a little better, but it really did depend on where the kids were--and they were of course all over the room. I turned to the strobist flickr group to get some suggestions, as I didn't want to be constantly adjusting my lights as they moved.

First off, they told me to change the position of my bounced flash. On the side of the room, it wasn't in the best place with the way my ceiling was sloping. For the 2nd flash, I had two suggestions--the first was to keep it on camera and fire it directly at the subjects as fill, and the second was to keep it on camera but bounce it off the ceiling as well. Keeping one flash on the camera helps to compensate for the kids moving about in the room. Here's the first test shot using a direct fill flash:


I had the 580 turned down as low as it would go (1/128). Not too shabby, but I still wasn't completely happy--it still has that "flashed" look to it. Not a lot, but enough that I notice it. It may be something I just have to get used to--which is tough because I really, really like a nice, soft light. Thinking back on it now, I may have to try this again using my mini-softbox on my flash. It really does fill in the shadows; so much so that there's really not a lot of definition and it looks a tad flat.

So, next I tried bouncing my on-camera flash. For the sake of comparison, I did one shot with the 580 turned off so I could see how it looked with the off-camera flash bounced:

Much better than the first pic with just the 580 on-camera bounced. You can definitely see a color cast from the walls/ceiling when compared to the 2nd picture in this post. Finally, here's a shot with both flashes bounced:


I didn't find there to be much difference between the two. Looking closely, there is a little more fill in this last shot--her cheeks are brighter, and the background (esp the bottom of the couch) looks a tad brighter. But again, not much difference. I will have to say, though, that I did correct the exposure in photoshop for the images--out of the camera the picture with just the bounced off camera flash was really underexposed compared to the last shot.

So which method is better? I kind of lean towards the look of the bounced 580 rather than the direct flash. I think I need to fiddle more with the ratios between the two flashes--perhaps reducing the off-camera one a tad and increasing the on-camera a bit will help. Maybe I'll be able to give it a try tonight :)

Simulated Sunlight

I was experimenting with some gels from the Rosco sample pack to try and find one that would give me the effect of golden sunlight right at sunrise/sunset.

This one is with the pale gold, I believe. Not bad. It's a nice and warm light.


Here's a shot without the gel for comparison:


Another with 1/2 straw (I think):


I don't think either of them *quite* hit it, but they're close. I wonder too if I've diffused the light too much shooting through the umbrella. It may look more like sunlight if I shoot a bare flash.

Cross lighting with the Sun

We got our tree this past weekend, and as is tradition, getting the tree turns into a photo shoot of the girls. I usually shoot this sans flash, and I always end up dealing with harsh shadows as the sunlight comes in through the trees. This year would be different, I thought to myself. Armed with some new strobist knowledge, I was going to use my flash and balance it with the ambient, using the sun as the main light and my flash as fill, and perhaps get a couple of shots using the cross-lighting technique.

Of course, with the girls being 4 and 2, it was pretty much impossible to contain them to really give any of this a decent try. They were running around like crazy, never standing still. Not being anywhere near fast with these techniques and flashes, it was not what I would call a success (though we did get a fantastic tree!) I did manage to get the girls to stand still for a pic by getting them to show their rocks that they had found to the camera. I positioned them with the sun above and behind them to their left, and had a 580EXII directly opposite low, to the front and to their right on my ultra-portable but very expensive light stand (i.e. my wife). I think it turned out OK for my first cross-lighting attempt. Yes, the highlights are blown, but I didn't really have time to check and adjust my settings as they quickly ran off after I snapped the pic.

My first favorite!

Woo-hoo! Got my first (strobist) "favorite" on flickr today! I uploaded this pic to the strobist pool that was taken over Thanksgiving. 430EX in a shoot-through umbrella, camera left.

Comparing light

One of the things I like to do is to try and take the same photo under different conditions and then compare them. It really helps me learn what the effects of the different variables are so I can eventually get to a place where I'll be able to "see the light" as DH says.

So, we were at my sister's for Thanksgiving and being the only one with kids, we were of course, the only ones up early in the morning. While the kids ate breakfast, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to set up some lights and mess around with them. I still don't really have a good handle on what I'm doing, so I'm trying to play around as much as I can to see what does what. The first pic here was done with a bare 430EX off to her right. At least this time I balanced the flash right and got a good exposure on her without that "direct on camera flash" look.


For the next photo, I thought I'd try out my snoot that I had made the week prior. I made it out of a cereal box and covered it with black gaffer's tape. It's about 6" long. I had to make some adjustments to the flash power, but I was able to get the subject properly exposed while achieving my goal of reducing the light on the background.



And for comparison's sake, I took a shot with the 430 behind a shoot-through umbrella (flash was in the same position for all 3 shots). You can see how the light is much softer--the harsh shadows on the background and on her face are gone, and I have some nice catchlights in her eyes. It's very interesting to me how the "mood" of each of the pictures is different, and it was all accomplished by just modifying/restricting the output of the flash.