Flash and ISO

[Scatterbrained]

First off, I use my free PB account to upload images of things I have for sale and I've never noticed any issues hundreds of uploads later. Second: Mo, you need to spend some time learning to use manual flash indoors. One book that might help a bit would be "On Camera Flash" by N. Van Niekerk. You could also peruse his site planet neil
Personally when indoors I try and set my exposure as close as I can to ambient and then use the flash to add that "little something". Don't be afraid to use higher ISOs and quit using ETTL, or at least learn to ride your FEC settings on the fly. If you're using a lightsphere then you're throwing light everywhere so you should be able to just set an exposure and maintain it (relatively anyway). I personally would get rid of the lightsphere but that's just me:mrgreen:.

 

[gsgary]

This is where a flash meter and knowing how to mix ambient and flash comes in handy, shutter speed controls AMBIENT and aperture controls FLASH and higher iso will let more ambient into the shot

 

[Robin Usagani]

Scatter.. I dont have experience in wedding photography. I was wondering why you would want to use manual flash? Why wouldnt you want to use this wonderful ETTL technology? I understand using manual with a model and family portraits. But at the actual wedding it seems to me the light keeps changing. Maybe use ETTL when you have to move around? Please englighten me because I am doing my first wedding next week LOL :lmao:. No worries.. ill start a thread of the results so you guys can eat me alive.

First off, I use my free PB account to upload images of things I have for sale and I've never noticed any issues hundreds of uploads later. Second: Mo, you need to spend some time learning to use manual flash indoors. One book that might help a bit would be "On Camera Flash" by N. Van Niekerk. You could also peruse his site planet neil
Personally when indoors I try and set my exposure as close as I can to ambient and then use the flash to add that "little something". Don't be afraid to use higher ISOs and quit using ETTL, or at least learn to ride your FEC settings on the fly. If you're using a lightsphere then you're throwing light everywhere so you should be able to just set an exposure and maintain it (relatively anyway). I personally would get rid of the lightsphere but that's just me:mrgreen:.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Why would a site that is trying to SELL you hosting space purposefully **** up your images? Yes, free photobucket accounts compress your images, not "underexpose them". People blame Flickr for messing up their colors too, it is documented that Flickr only adds a slight sharpening pass, but that's it. Most peoples problems come from not understanding colorspaces. Could that be your case?

I noticed it last week when I posted the picture of me eating popcorn. It was totally washed out compared to the original.....

It's kindda like FB thing, where it messes up totally while it tries to compress the images. With FB I learned the trick to knock down the PPI under 100 and change image size to 6x4 or 4x6 and that instantly fixed a lot of the issues there.

I haven't found the correct settings for Photobucket yet but haven't really looked into it yet.

Now to prove my point bitter, if you want to give me your email addy, I'll send you the pic of me eating popcorn and you can see the original vs what was posted on the forum.

I use both Photobucket, and Flickr. I don't have any problems with either.
If your image seems washed out, that is a common occurance with people not understanding COLORSPACE ISSUES, and has been discussed repeatedly on these very forums. Common complaint, common problem, common fix.

 

[Derrel]

You need to assign an sRGB profile to images posted to the web. MACINTOSH browsers are color-profile aware, and can properly display images that were edited in many different color spaces; most WINDOWS browsers ignore color space, and are not profile-aware....so...we often encounter different points of view, based on being either Windows or Macintosh users. ALthough it is now the 21st century, an article I read not long ago stated that almost 70 percent of PC's world-wide are still running Internet Explorer,version 7 I believe it is; that's an old, dumb, color profile-ignoring piece of....software...and it keeps people off of social networking sites at work, and keeps IT costs low at companies all over the world...still, even newer versions of browsers for Windows are expecting an sRGB profile to be associated with photographic JPEG files.

pBase, my hosting site, has a weird behavior; on the ORIGINAL size uploads, their images will come through as-shown and as-edited the way I upload them, but their Large, Medium, and Small images will CHANGE color profiles, so I have learned that for web uploading, I need to "tag" my web uploads with an sRGB profile, since more people are going to be seeing them via the web using Windoze than Macintosh browsers.

My experience seems to be that it's necessary to boost saturation about 17 points in PS to make up for the loss of saturation between my normal color profile and look in Photoshop and sRGB for the web.

 

[Scatterbrained]

Scatter.. I dont have experience in wedding photography. I was wondering why you would want to use manual flash? Why wouldnt you want to use this wonderful ETTL technology? I understand using manual with a model and family portraits. But at the actual wedding it seems to me the light keeps changing. Maybe use ETTL when you have to move around? Please englighten me because I am doing my first wedding next week LOL :lmao:. No worries.. ill start a thread of the results so you guys can eat me alive.

You never really know what ETTL is thinking for one, especially if you have flash modifiers mounted and you're bouncing the flash, the camera doesn't know how far the wall behind you is or whether the person it's metering is wearing white, black or pink. Like I said, if you're going to use ETTL, you need to be familiar enough with it predict what it will do and adjust FEC accordingly, I prefer to set it when I get in a room and make minor adjustment from there. The computer can't tell when you're 20ft from the wall you're bouncing off of or 5ft.
Let me relate a different example for you: Your check engine light comes on in your car. You take the car to the dealership and the young guy reads out your car and determines that the check engine code is for a front oxygen sensor, he makes this determination because the fault codes says "oo1-front oxygen sensor faulty". Two weeks later your light comes back on and it's the same code. Now a more experience technician looks at your car. He knows that the code was set because the feedback signal from the sensor was incorrect in relation other inputs. He determines that there is another problem that is throwing the reading off from the sensor. The cars computer only knows what it's sensors tell it; it has no way tell what is going on mechanically, just like your flash has no way of reading out the dynamics of the situation you are in. It is up to you to know how your flash works so you can interpret what it will do based on the situation at hand. If you can do that then you should be able to shoot with manual flash control anyway.

 

[kundalini]

Why wouldnt you want to use this wonderful ETTL technology?

Not speaking for Scatterbrained, but I like Manual for consistancy's sake if nothing else. If it's too hot, tone it down. If it looks too dark (like Mo's) amp it up.

But it's not just the flash value. It's the entire mix.... aperture, shutter speed, ISO and FEC. The "highlights" feature on your LCD works wonders. If it's blinking on an important portion of your shot, make an adjustment..... quickly and shoot again.

 

[MohaimenK]

Didn't know anything about what colorspace was. learning new things. Thanks

 

[Derrel]

Some people really hate to hear this, especially coming from me...but TTL flash control without color-aware, and distance-aware light metering is one of the reasons Nikon's TTL flash control system is so far ahead of Canon's...

Nikon has two discrete TTL methods: i-TTL and TTL-BL or Balanced Lighting. TTL-BL measures the overall scene in 3-D,and measures white balance, light level in EV, looks for unusually bright or outlying luminance values (like the sun, or those ceiling lights), measures the white balance and color temperature, and the reflectance values--at 420 separate locations, or 1,005 separate locations, and in the new D7000, at over 2,000 locations...and then the camera measures focused distance, color measurements, and reflectance values, and determines what "type" of scene you have, and then gives the correct exposure.

For in door,low-light shooting, Nikon's TTl-BL or Balance Lighting will gvie you almost perfectly-exposed flash + background matching, especially in LOW-light levels, at EV 9 and below. For regular "full-flash" looks, Nikon's current i-TTL flash measuring is more geared toward producing a brighter-looking "traditional" flash images exposure balance on the foreground subjects, as determined by the AF lock distance, RGB color measuring, and the reflectance value as compared against the RGB values.

Again, a lot of people really hate to hear this...but Canon's light metering has a long,long way to go compared to their main competitor, and if you go to many wedding forums, or have hung out there for more than a few years, you will find that Canon's lower-end cameras have had a lot of difficulties with flash metering. First, it was the differene between film-based and sensor-based reflectivity measuring: ALL manufacturers had that problem, since film is dull, but sensors are hugely shiny and refelvtive, so the real-time squelching and flash measurting was a biatch for ALL manufacturers to get right for several years.

Canon is now moving toward its iFCL light metering in the 7D and the new 60D; sorry to say it, but your camera blew a dead-easy situation because it's not smart enough...there is avery real reason that Canon is now building in wirelsss flash commander capabilities in the 7D; it's the first consumer Canon that's smart enough to make it feasible to measure complicated flash setups. Nikon has a 15 year head start on Canon on RGB color-aware and reflectivity aware light and flash metering, which premiered in the F5 in 1996.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Ok. Manual flash it is! Wish me luck! I'm annoying my wife because I keep flashing my camera while she's watching the TV.

 

[Derrel]

Well, then, make it a learning experience: try and get the perfect exposure of HER, and the TV set, using Manual exposure mode. Try 1/8 second at f/8 at ISO 400, + bounce flash...Daylight white balance...learn how to use the manually-selected shutter speed, plus the manually selected f/stop, plus the right ISO to get the PROPER exposure of a TV plus a person in a room using bounced flash. In this type of situation, manually adjusting the flash output up or down is the easiest way to get the right exposure on the person, and the TV screen's refresh rate is what determines the best shutter speed, and due to that being rather narrow in range (1/5 to 1/10 is about the range for TV sets), one has to use the right f/stop and the right ISO to control the TV picture's density. And the right flash output level for the room conditions.

To keep scan lines from being objectionable on a TV set, the shutter speed needs to be right around 1/8 second most of the time, in my experience. Faster speeds lead to big,huge black areas, and slightly faster speed have the scan lines showing as slight diagonals.

 

[prodigy2k7]

I dont do any weddings. I dont have any prolems with my 430 EXII from canon. I do use it indoors and in normal lighting. I only ever have a hard time if the subject is too far away and/or my aperture is too small etc. 9/10 I get the correct exposure. I use manual on camera and E-TTL automatic on the flash. Again, I dont shoot weddings, thats a LOT more pictures taken, and a lot more possibilities for something to not be calculated correctly. maybe im happy im not a wedding photography haha. I dont want to have that flash problem...

Edit: I forgot to quote but interesting info there Derrel. That is the good kind of info I like to hear about, with Canon vs Nikon. :thumbup:

 

[Robin Usagani]

derrel.. why so slow? I know it will let in more light.. but what if the couple move a little?

 

[Scatterbrained]

I dont do any weddings. I dont have any prolems with my 430 EXII from canon. I do use it indoors and in normal lighting. I only ever have a hard time if the subject is too far away and/or my aperture is too small etc. 9/10 I get the correct exposure. I use manual on camera and E-TTL automatic on the flash. Again, I dont shoot weddings, thats a LOT more pictures taken, and a lot more possibilities for something to not be calculated correctly. maybe im happy im not a wedding photography haha. I dont want to have that flash problem...

Edit: I forgot to quote but interesting info there Derrel. That is the good kind of info I like to hear about, with Canon vs Nikon. :thumbup:

It has nothing to do with whether or not you shoot weddings and everything to do with how you use your flash. There is no in flash setting for "tupperware party" so if you have a big piece of tupperware on the flash you need to know just how much light that will suck up be able to compensate. If you're are bouncing the flash over your shoulder what good is ETTL? The sensor on the flash is facing the opposite direction, as well as the camera.
Kundalini, consistency was the main point of my post, I guess it didn't come across that way though.

 

[Derrel]

derrel.. why so slow? I know it will let in more light.. but what if the couple move a little?

I'm sorry,but I do not know what you mean, "why so slow?" If you mean why so slow on the TV set + flash shots??? TV images are made up of many, brief flickering scans....so, you need a shutter speed that is slow enough to show enough scans to make a "complete" TV image.

Dragging the shutter, meaning using a slow shutter speed, brightens up the background in low-light, indoor and outdoor evening time flash photos. SLow shutter speeds like 1/8 second are really good to use with a VR or IS lens, so that you can get a steady shot while "dragging" the shutter down to slow speeds like 1/8 second or so. A wedding 'tog I know likes 1/20 second for indoor, lower-light shots...that allows him to pick up some tungsten,as he says, meaning the slowish 1/20 second speed allows artificial lights, like those in the church ceiling, to "burn in", and make an exposure, and it brightens the backgrounds up a little bit, and keeps the flash from appearing too bright and the backgrounds too dark, the way shots look when the shutter speed is say 1/200 or 1/250 second,and the flash is putting out enough light for foreground objects with the lens set to f/8, for example.

When my wife and I got married, I hired a very experienced pro, the best guy in town. He asked me how I would like the wedding reception flash pictures to be shot. He gave us the option of "full-flash" or "flash + ambient" (ie, shutter dragged); we went with full-flash, with darker backgrounds.