Trouble with my D70

tinacolada

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Well, I got a D70 from Santa (a little late) and I am having trouble with it focusing with my soft boxes. I am using a 50mm/1.4 I don't want a stobe light, just the soft boxes but I can't get it to focus without using the flash. If I turn the flash on, no problems but I want the soft warm look and I have tried different apatures and I can't figure out why my shots are turing out like this. I tried my manual mode and set my apature and shutter speed and it is making my photos black, like the lense cap is on. Am I missing something here too????? WHAT IS MY PROBLEM!!!! Help! Let me know if you have any ideas or if you have had similar problems. After the pictures are uploaded they don't look that bad but trust me, there is a problem here. Thanks, tina

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(with the flash, looks overexposed to me but clear)
 
does it focus fine when not using your softboxes? the only things i can think of with the blackness issue is a faulty camera or very fast shutter speed in low light.

if you play with the white balance settings, it changes the colour a lot, especially skin tones
 
Your problem looks to be quite simply that there isn't enough light. Try setting it up in M with the widest possible aperture but two (f2) and a shutter speed of about 1/60th or 1/125th on a tripod. That should let loads of light in and give good bokeh for the background. Try moving the lights closer or further away to alter the exposure when you have got it at an acceptable level.

Recalibrate your WB to perhaps incandescent or whatever setting to cool the pictures down a smidgen, they're a bit too tungstenny at the moment.

The softness you have at present is due to the subjects moving by the looks of it, so you need to get that shutter speed up. The two ways to do this are to up the lighting intensity or open the aperture further.

Regards,

Rob
 
Sounds odd because I've never had issues with my D70 focusing in low light.

What focus mode are you using? Ideally you should be in AF-S and always use the centre focus point as it's the only one that's cross hatched.

If your photos are turning out black in manual mode then you've quite simply got your shutter speed too high. Meter in P mode and note the aperture and shutter settings. Turn it to M mode and use those same settings, you should see the photo correctly.

The auto WB on the D70 is awfull in artificial light. Either shoot RAW and adjust in PP or set WB manually.
 
Thanks for all the help. I will work on some things today and hopefully it will get better!!!! I really appreciate all of your advise! I am in AF-S, I have messed with my shutter speed and will work on it today and see if I can't get them to turn out better. Thanks Again, TIna
 
I thought the whole point of using a soft Box was to soften the light which softens the shot. If the shot is super sharp (like when using on strobe or flash) then you see all the imperfections in the persons face.
 
Well, I worked on it tonight and synced my lights with the soft box and it looks really good, now I just have to work on the shadow. I am having trouble with my lights being too bright though. I tried using my back light and it overexposed my piture so bad. I turned the ISO all the way down and tried to use the metering but no luck with both lights firing. Any ideas? Thanks again, tina
 
tinacolada said:
Well, I worked on it tonight and synced my lights with the soft box and it looks really good, now I just have to work on the shadow. I am having trouble with my lights being too bright though. I tried using my back light and it overexposed my piture so bad. I turned the ISO all the way down and tried to use the metering but no luck with both lights firing. Any ideas? Thanks again, tina

Move the lights further from the subjects.

Rob
 

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