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Digital SLR / DSLR Camera Question / DSLR Thread 2

^^ Exactly. And I'm still confused as to why y'all were messing with shutter speed when you're shooting with strobes. If you're not blending with ambient, set it to max sync and leave it there.

<======see the red "250" in the avatar? That's max sync on a Nikon F4s. It's marked clearly for a very good reason. :thumbup
 
wannabe said:
This is the phrase what makes me think that you went the opposite of how I do it. It sounds like you set the strobes then tried to adjust the aperture according to what the strobes were giving you. It should have been the other way around.
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This too. In a studio setting, decide what aperture you want to use to achieve your goals, and set the lights accordingly.

At a wedding, I don't have time to go run to my lightstands and adjust flash power all the time, so I tend to control my lights via the aperture (and a few other tricks :teeth). But that's entirely different than what we're talking about here.
 
cycle61,
what triggers are you using? hopefully i get my hands on the cyber commander when it comes out and get AB1600 with it...it would be nice to control light/strobe remotely...
 
Yea I know my flash sync is 1/200 max. Was just seeing if going faster would work to try and lower the f/stop, obviously not
 
I'm using Pocket Wizards. Not cheap, but absolutely 100% reliable.

I've actually used the shutter curtain interference on purpose a couple of times...example: outside, bright sunny day, want to light something in part of the frame (eg. a person's face and upper body) but not really worried about the rest. If I can compose the shot so the fully exposed part is what I want to light, and the shutter blocks the flash from the other 1/3-1/2 of the frame, I can sync up to 1/500th or so to knock down the ambient to manageable levels. You just have to remember what part of the frame will get light from the flash at various shutter speeds and what won't.
 
On the other end of the spectrum, I use the Cactus triggers from Taiwan. They are dirt freakin' cheap, but you have to modify them on your own if you want them to be fairly reliable. But, they do the job until I can afford the Pocket Wizards.

In my case, the Cactus triggers combined with the Vivitar 285's have forced me to learn how to adjust all the settings manually. I'm getting better and faster at finding the right settings every time I shoot.

I like to think that when I finally move up to the more expensive strobes along with the new Pocket Wizard that handle the TTL signals, I will fully appreciate the capabilities. But, mostly, I'm cheap. I wan't to be smart about it. I don't want to be the guy that gets paid $300 for a session and immediately turns around and spends $3,000 on a new camera body.

I want to be the guy that takes fantastic pictures with dirt cheap gear. :teeth
 
wannabe said:
On the other end of the spectrum, I use the Cactus triggers from Taiwan. They are dirt freakin' cheap, but you have to modify them on your own if you want them to be fairly reliable.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on what modifications are necessary? Very curious since $32 triggers are in my wheelhouse while $180 Pocketwizards are not.
 
do a google search for 'cactus trigger antenna mod.' actually, if you do the same search on youtube, a bunch of people have posted videos on how to do it too. there are a few different versions of the mod. i ended up doing the one that uses a 433 MHz antenna that you can pick up at digikey.
 
wannabe said:
do a google search for 'cactus trigger antenna mod.' actually, if you do the same search on youtube, a bunch of people have posted videos on how to do it too. there are a few different versions of the mod. i ended up doing the one that uses a 433 MHz antenna that you can pick up at digikey.
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Cool! And I take it you're happy with the results?
 
yup. happy. the antenna mod totally increased the range of the trigger almost a full 10x. the setup still misfires ocassionally, but i can't complain considering the price point. the amount of misfires were reduced dramatically with the antenna mod as well.
 
cycle61 said:
Most cameras will sync at 1/250th or 1/200th, which should be fast enough to nearly eliminate any continuous light sources other than the sun at ISO 100/200 and f/8.

Generally indoors 1/200th -1/250th will completely kill your ambient, leaving you free to adjust aperture and flash power as desired for artistic effect.
Click to expand...

This is the coolest thing I've read this week! I gave it a try yesterday indoors, first with window light and then in a room lit by a 60 watt light. By George YOU'RE RIGHT! :laughing

One more piece of the Strobist magic is unveiled. Thanks!
 
wannabe said:
That's really odd. It's not totally clear still. My studio flow is something like this:

1. Take base exposure in Aperature priority mode with the specific aperture that I want to use. This will give me the baseline ambient setting.

2. Go to manual mode and input settings that were given to me in Aperature mode.

3. Go down a couple stops on exposure and add lights one at a time. I do this deliberately to make sure that I can see what each light does to the picture.

4. From there, it's just a matter of methodically stepping down in exposure and adding lights to taste.

Note that I pick a camera setting and adjust the power in the strobes to give me what I want in the picture. I don't adjust the camera settings to compensate for the strobe settings.

If your room was small you had too many strobes set, you could have removed one or more of the strobes to get what you wanted. White walls work well as reflectors.
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This has been something I've been trying to figure out. I feel like I'm so close to understanding strobe lighting, but there is still some mystery. My education on the topic is an amalgamation of bits and pieces from this thread, from strobist.com, from browsing strobist setups on Flickr and whatever I happen to find on Google.

I don't really have a method, as you describe above, to setup and tweak exposure. I just play around with it until it looks right. Even a blind horse finds water sometimes...

What I would LIKE to learn is how to set up everything /manually/. No TTL, no iTTL, nothing. The strobist guy hooked me when he suggested learning it this way and they you'll never have to worry about this system or that system.

1. Take base exposure in Aperature priority mode with the specific aperture that I want to use. This will give me the baseline ambient setting.
Click to expand...

Can you give an example? For instance, you're indoors, you set your aperture to, say, 5.6 and take a shot. Shutter speed is 1/200 or whatever... OK. Got it. Now you switch over to 1/200 and 5.6 [M]anual mode, yes? Why is this step necessary? Why not just go 1/200 and 1/250 every time and whatever aperture you want, and just adjust the flash power for the correct exposure? :confused






.
 
cycle61 said:
This too. In a studio setting, decide what aperture you want to use to achieve your goals, and set the lights accordingly.

At a wedding, I don't have time to go run to my lightstands and adjust flash power all the time, so I tend to control my lights via the aperture (and a few other tricks :teeth). But that's entirely different than what we're talking about here.
Click to expand...

That's my point tho, I wanted to set my aperture down around 3.5ish, but couldn't, because the strobes - even on minimum, even with only 1, were too bright.

Need a bigger studio, bigger brollies... sigh... Or maybe an ND filter to cheat for now. But then the auto focus get's all fucked up. Aaagh!

And, good info on those triggers! Might have to look into that....
 
anybody know where i can get 5dmkII battery? kaufman's in san mateo has em but for $100? wtf...way over priced...
 
Joebar4000 said:
That's my point tho, I wanted to set my aperture down around 3.5ish, but couldn't, because the strobes - even on minimum, even with only 1, were too bright.

Need a bigger studio, bigger brollies... sigh... Or maybe an ND filter to cheat for now. But then the auto focus get's all fucked up. Aaagh!

And, good info on those triggers! Might have to look into that....
Click to expand...



I still don't understand this. I don't understand why you need an ND filter. I don't know what effect you were looking for, but, I've shot in a tiny room with all white walls at @ f2.8 with multiple strobes without a problem. A 1/200th exposure should have just about blacked out the whole image. You just have to control the light and where it goes. Umbrellas are like the hand grenades of light modifiers. All they do is soften the light without really controlling where it goes. (Nick mentioned this earlier.) Size isn't going to buy you any exposure control.

And, completely blacking out the room and just using the strobes is a real pain in the ass especially for Canon shooters. The low light auto focus on the Canons is garbage. That's why I don't shoot in low light if I can help it. And, in a studio environment, you can always control this.
 
The problem probably was that the flashes were way too close, seeing how the studio was so small she was only a few feet from each
 
if your talking about this photo
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then change your aperture...and probably use 1/80th or so...the photographer is far enough from the subject and DOF wont be a problem...

i can get away with 1/80th iso 100 f4 with that kinda setting...even with f5.6...

maybe flash at 1/2 power or so...
 
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