flash and shutter speed override ?

[tirediron]

Shutter speed has virtually no effect on the exposure; 1/200 is perfectly adequate. Umbrellas will help you soften the light, but they won't have a significant effect on the problem you're having at the moment. Make sure you flag the background side of your lights with black construction paper or something similar to prevent spill.

 

[dannylightning]

Ok, flagging will be the next thing I try, I will read those links you guys sent me later tonight or tomorrow, got off work at 8am and I probably wont go to bed till late tonight so It might be best to read them after I get some sleep.

 

[dannylightning]

flagging did not seem to help, and I do need to be around f/13 f/14 before the background gets to the point of almost being pure black. I am not getting good lighting on the subject unless I turn the flash brighter and than no more black background, I guess I am going to need to read that stuff or I probably wont have any luck doing this indoors.

seems like constant light might be allot easier to work with. at least I could see how the subject was lit before I took the shot.

 

[Braineack]

constant light is a lot harder to work with; flash is much easier once you understand it.

getting a black background is realitively easy.

Even using an umbrella (which spreads light all over the place) with a single speedlight, I can keep the background nearly pitch black:


Single Light Selfie by The Braineack, on Flickr

I was standing a bit too close to the BG and pure black here it wasn't really my goal.

BUT this was at f/5.6. The flash was metered to f/5.6 at my face, and since the light falls off quickly even when spread around through an umbrella, it doesn't really light up the background.

you can see in this shot some of the blue background is coming through where it's closer to the light, but towards the far frame it's still black.

again, read up on the inverse square law.

If you need f/13-f/14 to get to black, then your flash is too powerful. If you keep reducing the aperture, then you'll keep increasing the flash power because that has a direct effect on the exposure of the flash.

you need to lower the power of your flash and move it closer to the subject.

In that shot you posted of your mom, the flash was about 3x further away then I'd start with.

this is a pretty decent video on the subject:

 

[Scatterbrained]

First: dial in the exposure without the speedlight. At iso 100 you should be able to completely kill the ambient light in the room with a 1/200th shutter speed using just about any reasonable aperture. After you've got that dialed it's time to set the light up. It needs to be very close to the subject, and you need to control spill. If the flash is off the camera chances are the head will default to a relatively wide zoom setting (with Canon that would be 24mm). You can use the zoom function to help narrow the beam of light for some spill control. Flagging should work as well but you need to know where to put the flags. You can take a wider shot and look for hotspots showing up on walls and ceilings, then place black cards around the flash to block that light.

 

[Scatterbrained]

constant light is a lot harder to work with; flash is much easier once you understand it.

getting a black background is realitively easy.

Even using an umbrella (which spreads light all over the place) with a single speedlight, I can keep the background nearly pitch black:


Single Light Selfie by The Braineack, on Flickr

I was standing a bit too close to the BG and it wasn't really my goal.

this was at f/5.6. The flash was metered to f/5.6 at my face. and since the light falls off quickly, even when spread around through an umbrella, it doesn't light up the background.

you can see in this shot some of the blue background is coming through where it's closer to the light, but towards the far frame it's still black.

again, read up on the inverse square law.

If you need f/13-f/114 to get to black, then your flash is too powerful. If you keep reducing the aperture, then you'll keep increasing the flash power because that has a direct effect on the exposure of the flash.

you need to lower the power of your flash and move it closer to the subject.

Constant light is not harder to work with. There is a reason studio lights have modeling bulbs. . .it's to provide a constant light so you can see what you are doing. Light modifiers and light ratios are what matter. You can do it with constant light or flash so long as you know how light works.

 

[dannylightning]

I am not sure the flash is too powerful, when I have it down around 1/128 power it barley lights the subject yet the background is still not completely black.

there is also a Ev setting that will go from -7, -3 0 +3 +7 at 1/128th it will not let me go into the negative numbers on the EV settings,

there is also a ISO setting on the flash but when its off camera it always goes to 100 ISO and that will only change when its on the camera.

the flash is a neewere VK750 II and it probably came with the worst instruction manual I have ever seen.

now there is a zoom setting on the flash it goes from 14mm all the way to around 180mm I have no idea what to do with that. I had it at 14mm and than tried 35mm and got about the same results.

 

[Braineack]

Constant light is not harder to work with. There is a reason studio lights have modeling bulbs. . .it's to provide a constant light so you can see what you are doing. Light modifiers and light ratios are what matter. You can do it with constant light or flash so long as you know how light works.

try exposing to your modeling bulbs and see how that 0.5sec exposure works out for you--without a tripod and a moving subject.

 

[dannylightning]

this will show you how much power the flash has when turned all the way down, yet I am still having issues.

this is 1/200 f/8 and iso 100 flash power is set to 1/128

 

[Braineack]

hey a black background!

 

[WayneF]

yes the speed light was in the range of distance Wayne, I moved them on about 2 feet from the subject on the second set of pics which seemed to work better for getting a black background but the subject was not lit as well so I would really need to move her around and snap pics till it lit her up well which is what really seems like a pain. the flash from my camera was not bright enough to light the subject, just bright enough to trigger the speed light. since my camera was pointed directly at the background I did not want that to effect the photo

The little flash tube is just a point source. If at 3 feet, it will down one stop 3 feet from center (45 degree angle to that edge). And of course, any shadows (noses and skin pores, etc) are quite dark and harsh from the small main light.

An umbrella would help to illuminate the whole subject area... The idea of an umbrella is that it be near the same size as its distance to the subject. A 3 foot umbrella fabric at 3 feet illuminates an area at least that large, and will be VERY soft light there. It is what you want for portraits.

The camera flash as a trigger can also be set a little brighter, to intentionally provide a weaker frontal fill light. It should be 1 or 1.5 stops weaker at the subject than the main light. You want the main light to be high and wide of the subject, creating intentional darker tonal gradients on the cheeks and such. Then a bit of frontal fill light makes them be not quite as dark.

 

[dannylightning]

still not completely black, got out the remote control and put the flash in that spot and I stood about 3 feet in front of the flash, I am not lit well and I can still see stuff in the background



than I dropped my flash and it would not turn on, I had to bend the battery prongs back so the battery's would make good contact again, but I think I fixed it, it turns on now I forgot to screw the flash down on the tripod mount so when I moved the tripod down it went.

 

[Scatterbrained]

Constant light is not harder to work with. There is a reason studio lights have modeling bulbs. . .it's to provide a constant light so you can see what you are doing. Light modifiers and light ratios are what matter. You can do it with constant light or flash so long as you know how light works.

try exposing to your modeling bulbs and see how that 0.5sec exposure works out for you--without a tripod and a moving subject.

If you're shooting with constant lights I'd hope you'd be using something stronger than a modeling light. Beyond that, there are quite a few portrait shooters out there who shoot with hot lights. It's all about knowing your light. Right now the OP is still trying to figure that part out.

 

[dannylightning]

I have watched quite a few constant light vs strobe videos and or websites that talked about it. constant lightning kind of seems like the way to go from what I have seen. looks like allot of photographers are going back to constant lighting these days and most of them say they are allot easier to work with. allot of them seemed to think it also gave you a more natural look over strobes or speed lights and when looking at the photos they had up for comparison I actually think I liked the way most of the constant lighting photos looked.

you can definitely do more with strobes or speed lights though but if your just looking at getting nice standard shots constant is looking pretty good. of course I have no clue what I am doing and so far its seems like a huge pain using these things, well at least if you want a all black background when you really have a white background to work with.

 

[curtyoungblood]

Why don't you move all that stuff that's in the background?