Amateur Lighting Troubles

Leigh4 · Oct 13, 2010

Hey all. Recently bought a Canon XS to make the transition from P and S to a DSLR. I bought a few very basic shoot through umbrellas just to have some fun with in the house. With winter coming, my days of roaming the neighborhood to practice are limited so I thought it would be fun to have my poor children become my victims. Anyway...I am a beginner. I am learning. I've read countless books, forums and watched tutorials for hours. And I am completely at a loss with indoor lighting. My subject is lit up like a christmas tree! I have tried single lighting, multiple lights, reflectors and all with the same results....DARK DARK DARK or the shutter speed is so incredibly slow that even with a tripod it isn't practicle. In one of the many videos I watched it was mentioned that a shutter speed of 1/125, ISO of 100 and F4-5.6 should yield good results. Ha!! You can't even see my kid! I am thinking I missed something fundamental here and am probably embarrassing myself by even asking. =) But I'm desperate! Any advice or tips would be appreciated! Thanks.

iPhoto17 · Oct 13, 2010

im new to indoor lighting as well but this is what i found. you might want to try a little higher ISO like 200 or 400, if your getting too much try lowering the aperture

jeff by ~xAgentxMulderx on deviantART

for this i used a pitch black room with 2 spot lamps with incandescent light bulbs facing right towards him with an aperture of f/13 and a shutter speed 10/1000 of a second with my ISO at 200. with the pop up flash..... hope this helps somehow

tirediron · Oct 13, 2010

Could you post a couple of examples with EXIF data intact, and perhaps a diagram of your set-up? That would really help in the diagnosis.

eccs19 · Oct 13, 2010

How are you triggering the off camera flash(s)? If your using a light trigger, perhaps your onboard flash for you camera has a pre-flash firing, and triggering the other flashes to early.

Leigh4 · Oct 14, 2010

Tirediron - I wish I could, but I deleted them all from my card once I stopped kicking my light stands.

But, what I can tell you is that based on some reading I had done, I started with ISO 100, F/5.6 and shutter at 1/125. All you could see was an outline of my son's smile. Dark does not even describe how the photo came out. I played with the settings from there and I was up a +1 second shutter speed before he was even visible! WTH?? lol Increasing the ISO helped, as did playing with the aperture...but I guess it was my beginner's ignorance that thought if the subject is well and evenly lit, the camera will KNOW.

Eccs - I should have specified...I was attempting to use continuous lighting. I experimented a bit with distance and angles from the subject, but saw little difference. I ordered a transmitter/receiver today and will make use of the speedlite I have...hopefully, with more success.

And thank you, 1photo...isn't the learning process both fun and frustrating?

tirediron · Oct 14, 2010

That seems very strange to me. How many lights of how many watts each and [approximately] what are the light to subject and subject to camera distances?

Derrel · Oct 14, 2010

Sounds to me like the off-camera flash and the shutter might not be synchronized! The descriptions you are providing us with are a clue that the umbrella flash is NOT illuminating the subjects when the shutter is making the exposure...

My guess--set the camera's on-board flash to 1/16 power in the MANUAL flash control mode, and see if that will help, by eliminating a pre-flash that is fooling the off-camera flash in to triggering early, before the shutter begins its exposure. Note: my advice is based upon me "assuming" that you are using a photo-cell "slave trigger" to synchronize the flash off of the camera in the umbrella with the camera's shutter.