Playing with lighting..

[stsinner]

I have a very annoying and unwilling subject for learning lighting and exposure-my dog, Mocha. Mocha is a Neapolitan Mastiff, and she hates the camera for some unknown reason.

So I used advice I got on here and talked with a professional buddy of mine about firing my optical slaves and settled on this advice-Put the camera in Manual, Set the ISO at 200 (the lowest my camera goes), set the f-stop at f/8 and set the shutter speed to 100. From this site I got the advice to use my SB600 pointed straight up to fire the slaves stopped down to 1/64..

This little experiment made me realize just how important the right light is and that the flash alone doesn't do a damn thing for you in terms of creating a professional image.

Here's my baby with full frontal flash:

A pretty useless and overexposed picture...

And here is my setup-two tripod mounted flashes with translucent white umbrellas (these are two very cheap ($19.99 each) Quantaray MS-1 flashes):

And Here are two pictures of Mocha with the studio lighting used pretty properly. I want to thank all those who gave advice and encouraged me:

 

[KhronoS]

Be very careful, for me all the shots or out of focus. The light looks good but the shots are not because are not in focus. You need the ees of the subject in focus. For example in the third one you had his nose in focus.

 

[goodoneian]

if you're going to be that close to your subject try shooting through the umbrella, the light will be a bit softer. you may have to turn the flash power up a stop or so though

 

[stsinner]

Be very careful, for me all the shots or out of focus. The light looks good but the shots are not because are not in focus. You need the ees of the subject in focus. For example in the third one you had his nose in focus.

You, sir, are a buzz kill.. Now that I look at what you say, I can see it. But how do you get the whole head in focus when you're using large apertures? I was on 4.2 by the time it was done.. I only started at f8.

These cheap flashes don't have power adjustments-just an on/off switch.

 

[stsinner]

if you're going to be that close to your subject try shooting through the umbrella, the light will be a bit softer. you may have to turn the flash power up a stop or so though

I appreciate your advice, but I have two questions/problems-how do you shoot through an umbrella, and these cheap flashes don't have any adjustments at all-just on/off switches.

And just one other little detail-I wasn't close to her-I was over ten feet away using my 70-300 so that I didn't realize any of the flash power of my sb600. I stood in the same location as the second picture where you see the umbrellas, but I zoomed in.