Flash Studio Help

Matorian · May 9, 2015

My wife is having issues with our new flash studio with the photos being extremely noisy when used. This is what we have:

Photography Flash Lighting Kits Julius Studio

Her settings are F22 at 1/200.

She uses the Canon Rebel T3i.

Any other setting either makes it over or under exposed even at the lowest flash power setting. Is there something we don't have configured correctly for flash in-door photography, were still new to using flash any help would be much appreciated.

Attaching some pictures to show some examples.

tirediron · May 9, 2015

Uhh... knock your ISO down to 200 or so from 6400 and things will start to make sense!

Matorian · May 9, 2015

tirediron said:
Uhh... knock your ISO down to 200 or so from 6400 and things will start to make sense!

At ISO 200 the picture is to dark, 6400 is the only one that will at least light up the picture and not be over exposed.

KmH · May 9, 2015

And don't use f/22.
I recommend using ISO 400 with flash.
Open the lens aperture up to f/8. That will improve image sharpness by eliminating diffraction.
When using flash shutter speed and ISO controls the ambient light exposure.
Lens aperture and the flash unit power setting controls the flash exposure.
All with the same shutter release.

Get the subject 8 or more feet from the background.

tirediron · May 9, 2015

Set your ISO to 200, set your aperture to f5.6 and your 300 w/s light to 1/3 power at a distance of about 4' from the subject. I'm willing to bet all will be fine (unless there's a problem with your lights).

Buckster · May 9, 2015

You should be able to shoot at ISO 200 with no problem.

How far away are your lights from the subject? They should be as close as possible without being in the shot after any crop in post is applied. Are they cranked up to full power?

Do you really need F/22? F/11 or so should be plenty. Or open up even more to get more separation from the background, which is generally thought to make for a better portrait.

Matorian · May 9, 2015

KmH said:
And don't use f/22.
I recommend using ISO 400 with flash.
Open the lens aperture up to f/8. That will improve image sharpness by eliminating diffraction.
When using flash shutter speed and ISO controls the ambient light exposure.
Lens aperture and the flash unit power setting controls the flash exposure.
All with the same shutter release.

Get the subject 8 or more feet from the background.

These settings seemed to have done the job with the studio flash, picture looks a lot better, thanks very much.

Matorian · May 9, 2015

She was using 2 flashes out of the 4 flash set with 2 in front about 2 feet away from our son. We just got this studio a couple of months ago but haven't gotten to practice with it very much. She tried several different settings but they turned out very grainy, hopefully this thread might be of help to anyone with similar issues.

She changed it to ISO 400 at F/8 and it cleared up very nicely. She tried 200 at F/22 but it went completely dark which she was very confused on.

Derrel · May 9, 2015

Your original looked to be about 1 to 1.5 EV over-exposed, so yeah, f/8 at ISO 400 ought to b pretty close; easily a generous enough exposure to get some detail in the blacks.

f/22 at ISO 6400 *
f/16 at ISO 3200
f/11 at ISO 1600
f/8 at ISO 800
f/5.6 at ISO 400

*Appears over-exposed to me