Most common PP for portraits?

stsinner · Dec 7, 2008

My exif says the dog pics were at 800. I didn't know you could st the ISO in P mode-I've only used A and S.

I just lowered the ISO to 200 and took the pic again without the dog. Auto WB

viridari · Dec 7, 2008

stsinner said:
I just lowered the ISO to 200 and took the pic again without the dog. Auto WB

Was the flash pointing directly at the couch? Or bounced?

stsinner · Dec 7, 2008

Directly at it.

viridari · Dec 7, 2008

Just as a proof of concept I tried this with my camera. I turned off all of the lights except for an aquarium across the room. Just enough to allow focus. I turned down the power on my 285HV (very bright at full power, but certainly not as bright as your SB600 can go if I turn it down to 1/4). Dropped all the way down to ISO 100 and max flash sync speed of 1/250. Aperture came in at f/11.

Just a bad photo of some assorted junk on top of my desk taken in the dark.

I can't speak to the white balance issues at all but your exposures are telling me that you're just not getting light onto your subject.

Chewbecca · Dec 8, 2008

I just don't get it.
How is it you are shooting at 1/15, ISO 800 and aperture of f5.6, and you're using flash and you're STILL not getting enough light?
Crazy.

stsinner · Dec 8, 2008

How do you look at my exif? Not how do I look at it, but how are you doing it? I thought that right-clicking and hitting properties would do it, but no.

viridari · Dec 8, 2008

stsinner said:
How do you look at my exif? Not how do I look at it, but how are you doing it? I thought that right-clicking and hitting properties would do it, but no.

Unless you're running Linux, my method won't do you any good.

I save the file to disk, then from a command line I type "exif <filename>" and it dumps all of the EXIF data that it can parse. For some reason it's not parsing ISO metadata from your Nikon but it does parse from my Canon. Weird.

andrew99 · Dec 8, 2008

If you're using the Firefox web browser, you can install a plugin to view exif data.

manaheim · Dec 8, 2008

I assume you've taken the lightsphere off for these?

Also, how high are your ceilings?

manaheim · Dec 8, 2008

stsinner said:
How do you look at my exif? Not how do I look at it, but how are you doing it? I thought that right-clicking and hitting properties would do it, but no.

I recommend installing a program called Opanda EXIF. It's free and allows you to right-click any image to get info on it.

DavidSR · Dec 8, 2008

Just curious, but the Quantaray MS1 I believe is an optical slave flash. You would need another flash to trigger it..are you by any chance using your camera flash to trigger it? Your on camera flash might be what's giving you such harsh light. Oh and shutter speed doesn't affect pictures taken with flash only the ambient light. If you are using lights in your house when you take these pictures I suggest you shoot at about 1/200 or whatever your camera syncs at to only get the flash in the picture and not have any WB inconsistencies.

I forgot to include that your flash is dependant on your aperture and ISO settings..not so much shutter speed unless you want some ambient light in there to keep your background from turning into a black hole

stsinner · Dec 8, 2008

andrew99 said:
If you're using the Firefox web browser, you can install a plugin to view exif data.

I am using Firefox, so I'll check for that plug-in.

manaheim said:
I assume you've taken the lightsphere off for these?

Also, how high are your ceilings?

The Lightsphere was not mounted last night in the late-night shots of the dog and couch. My ceilings are 7 feet and white.

Last night I was asked to duplicate the shot in P mode, but I didn't. I had my 18-55 mounted and no lightsphere. Well, this morning I duplicated the shot, but I did it in AUTO just to make sure that it's something that I'm doing wrong. And it is... So I really appreciate your guys' patience and sorting this out. I need to find out what settings are wrong. Here's the results with 70-300 mounted, SB600 mounted in TTL mode and Lightsphere mounted, camera in AUTO. I think these are perfect color-wise and exposure-wise, so I don't really have any reason to leave Auto mode. The only reason I want to learn how to shoot in Manual is because of the Quantarays/umbrella setup for doing portraits. They don't fire at the right time in Auto due to being optically triggered. Anyway-here's the results from this morning in Auto:

So I don't think there's anything wrong with my camera-just my skills..

stsinner · Dec 8, 2008

DavidSR said:
Just curious, but the Quantaray MS1 I believe is an optical slave flash. You would need another flash to trigger it..are you by any chance using your camera flash to trigger it? Your on camera flash might be what's giving you such harsh light. Oh and shutter speed doesn't affect pictures taken with flash only the ambient light. If you are using lights in your house when you take these pictures I suggest you shoot at about 1/200 or whatever your camera syncs at to only get the flash in the picture and not have any WB inconsistencies.

I forgot to include that your flash is dependant on your aperture and ISO settings..not so much shutter speed unless you want some ambient light in there to keep your background from turning into a black hole

The way I trigger the Quantaray's is to use the SB600 pointed up and stopped all the way down as low as it will go.

One thing I have no idea about is flash sync.. I'll have to go searching for a blurb about that in layman's terms.. I did notice that when I have my flash turned on in Manual mode and scroll the wheel, I can select red-eye correction or "rear." What does Rear do?