New camera, lighting and exposure questions

[LeSueur24]

I just got a 30D for Christmas so I'm still getting used to it and changing with a lot of settings. Today I took it to my local trails to do some normal mtb shooting, but the weather is horrible, gray sky all day. I shoot with 2 flashes remotely, a canon 430EX and a 430EZ. What I'm trying to do is get some more warmth and color in these shots with this kind of weather. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

I was shooting 1/160 and f4.5 ISO 320. Flashes both at 1/2 power, one to the left of the landing ramp and one to the right. One thing I'm curious about is the color temperature under the menu, mine is at 5600K and I'm not sure what it should be set at.

 

[K_Pugh]

If you wanted more atmosphere and didn't mind losing the daylight look you could have changed your WB to Tungsten, gelled your flashes with Full CTO gels and even brought the ambient right down, too..

If you just wanted a more saturated colours you could have underexposed your ambient a little.. even added a 1/4 CTO gel to your flashes to warm them up a bit..

 

[LeSueur24]

Thanks, I'm going to look into buying some gels. I've done way too much strobist styled photography and never gotten any.

 

[SpeedTrap]

Why not just add a bit of warmth to your colours in PP or set a custom WB to give a bit warmer colour?

 

[jcolman]

Why not just add a bit of warmth to your colours in PP or set a custom WB to give a bit warmer colour?

Exactly. While it's always desirable to get your color temps right in-camera, it's an easy fix in post if you shoot RAW.

 

[craig]

I would work on your WB before buying gels. 5600k is standard outdoor temp. Feel free to try different temperatures. If you are shooting 2 strobes at 1/2 power try lowering your ISO to 100 and crank up the flashes. Lower ISO's generally give better colour. On my Nikon D200 I am able to customize the custom WB. For example I usually shoot Cloudy + 2 WB. Long story short. Take notes and experiment. It is a lot of work at first, but having custom WB is essential in your workflow.

Love & Bass

 

[LeSueur24]

I shoot .raw pretty much all the time, so I have all of that down. It's just frustrating not having the picture come out the way I want it to on the camera and having to use .raw editing to fix the problems instead of using it to enhance the picture. I'm definitely going to work with white balance settings if I keep having trouble.

 

[dtornabene1]

I think what this photograph is missing is some saturation. While the main subject has color, the picture is flat to me. I think we, myself included, are too quick to blame everything on WB.

Try boosting the saturation to bring out some of the color. Also, with some contrast adjustments, your trees will frame the photograph better.

One last suggestion, I would turn the flashes down. I think the main subject is emphasized too much with light.

-Nick