i'm alive! and i have a question :)

[naptime]

hey everyone. i'm alive. it's true.

sorry for my lack of presence lately. I've been extremely busy in the shop.

so me and the kid have been shooting full manual for a few weeks now. really getting a better understanding of exposure, our camera's etc...

we aren't pro's yet (but that's only because i haven't created a watermark yet) but we're moving along nicely.


so anyway.. tonight i went to watch some toughman fights. i was about 6 rows back from ringside.

i used my 70-300 at about 80-100mm most of the time.

even at 1600 ISO it was too dark to shoot handheld without my flash.

so, i ended up shooting most everything at f11 and around 90/125 shutter speed. i used my hot shoe flash, which i have not played with a lot yet.

in the beginning, i remembered to set my wb for florescent. but after the first fight, i realized that i needed my flash. but i failed to change my wb. so the shots were coming out a harsh almost bluish tint to them.

about 2 or 3 fights in, i remembered to change my wb over to flash. and pictures were much more realistic looking.


so.. my question....

on the shots where i had the wrong wb set... is that something i can change in lightroom? i haven't played with it a lot yet. i shoot in raw+jpg so i have the raw files.. but i just don't know that much about lightroom yet. i know i can go in and play with curves etc... but not so sure about magically changing the white balance..

simple as click here click there?


an example...

these two shots were taken with the flash, and wb set for flash.


IMG_1030 by jaythomson, on Flickr


IMG_0989 by jaythomson, on Flickr


these two shots were taken with flash, but wb was erroneously left on florescent.


IMG_0958 by jaythomson, on Flickr


IMG_0957 by jaythomson, on Flickr



these are jpg straight from the card. i havent messed with them in lightroom yet.

 

[cgipson1]

good to see you back!

You can easily clean that WB up in LR... although I did this in PS....

Could have shot at a larger aperture too.. say F4 or 5.6. It would have given you a couple more stops of light to play with. You were far enough away for a decent DOF at those apertures...

 

[Overread]

When you take a RAW shot the white balance isn't actually fixed at all until its processed. It will display the JPEG that is embedded into every RAW on the back of the camera and in previews on the computer and most RAW reading programs will read the default white balance settings you used at the time in the camera when giving you the initial view. However, for a RAW, its still not fixed till you set it in the developing stage. Its normally the two top most sliders in most RAW developing tools - the Temperature and the Colour sliders in the White balance slot. There is also a series of default options and lightroom also offers some colour dippers that you can use to set the white balance based on a known colour point in a shot (eg a white or a surface near enough to in the scene).

 

[LightSpeed]

Well well well.
I was hoping that you were ok.

I wondered if something may have happened to you.
Glad to see you.

Your photos remind me ..........of me.
Been there , done that.
I almost hate to look at em.
Your question has already been answered.

I'm glad you stuck with this.
And .....I hope you and Asia are well.

LightSpeed.

 

[naptime]

thanks guys.


yes, we definitly stuck with it.

doing our lessons at least once a week. shooting pretty much every day. something.

and, shooting in full manual.

i'll post some stuff later.

 

[KmH]

F/11 was diminishing a significant amount of your flash power.

The further away your point of focus is the deeper the DoF your lens will produce. With a XSi, 100 mm, f/11 and assuming a foucs point distance of 30 feet the total DoF would have been about 12 feet (about 40% in front of, and 60% behind the point of focus or 40/60)
At f/8 instead of f/11 (a full stop) the total DoF would still have been about 8.5 feet (43/57).

When using flash the duration of the flash if light is quite short. Most hot shoe mounted flash units set to full power have a flash duration of about 1/000. The short flash duration substitues for using about the same shutter speed. (Note; The flash duration gets even shorter as the flash unit power output is reduced.)

That short flash duration frees up the shutter speed setting so it can be used to control the ambient light exposure, and the lens aperture is then used to control the strobed light (flash) exposure.

So if you had used f/8 instead of f/11 the larger lens aperture would have let more light from your flash unit contribute to the exposure.

 

[naptime]

thanks

haven't even begun to start learning about flashes yet. hell, i dont even know if i had everything on it set right. i just know it was firing

i was at f11, obviously, newbie mistake.. but, here's why...

i was thinking.. well, at 70mm, this lens goes down to 4.5 and at 300mm it goes to 5.6 i know not to use it wide open because it wont be as good. so i figured i should step up to f8. but then i thought... i want everything in focus, so i should step up again and go to f11 so i don't get a shallow dof. i was not (pronounced "forgot") to factor in distance.

up to now, all the dof lessons and exercises that asia and i have done, have been in the house. only a few feet away. so we were working with dof's of inches.

i failed to remember that the farther the subject is, the deeper the dof becomes

and you are right, i was probably in the area of about 30 feet away.

 

[KmH]

When people recommend stopping down a lens to increase the DoF they are usually referring to prime (single focal length) f/1.2, f/1.4, and f/1.8 lenses, and some constant aperture f/2.8 zoom lenses, not variable aperture zoom lenses with a maximum aperture of f/3.5.