With and without flash...What did I do wrong??

tmjjk · Jul 27, 2012

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Robin Usagani · Jul 27, 2012

this look like a cloudy day? If it is cloudy, I would face the subjects to the sun. It will make a big difference even if you cant really see the sun.

cgipson1 · Jul 27, 2012

pop up flash? Dead center highlight in eyes... flat lighting, very little shadowing. The flash shot is much better that the ambient shot, though. What WB did you shoot this on (Exif shows Manual??).

Your shutter speed was at 1/50... pretty slow for handheld. Aperture of 6.3 looks about right though. Kids and their goofy expressions.. lol!

tmjjk · Jul 27, 2012

I have made a mission out of shooting in manual for all my personal shots... but even with my own family I am getting so frustrated. This was evening time and I was getting ridiculous motion blur. I upped the shutter speed and then the images were dark, I upped the iso and then they were noisy. Changed my aperture and they were soft. I felt like a failure after this shoot

Pity party for me....

SO... maybe bounce my flash off my reflector??? And yes it was my pop up flash... sorry, I will not do that again

tmjjk · Jul 27, 2012

Schwettylens said:
this look like a cloudy day? If it is cloudy, I would face the subjects to the sun. It will make a big difference even if you cant really see the sun.

thanks.... SO GLAD YOU ARE BACK

cgipson1 · Jul 27, 2012

tmjjk said:
I have made a mission out of shooting in manual for all my personal shots... but even with my own family I am getting so frustrated. This was evening time and I was getting ridiculous motion blur. I upped the shutter speed and then the images were dark, I upped the iso and then they were noisy. Changed my aperture and they were soft. I felt like a failure after this shoot Pity party for me....

SO... maybe bounce my flash off my reflector??? And yes it was my pop up flash... sorry, I will not do that again

White Balance????? Which one.. how did you set it? How are you metering? (and these were shot in Aperture Priority.. not Manual! ???)

Robin Usagani · Jul 27, 2012

tmjjk said:
I have made a mission out of shooting in manual for all my personal shots... but even with my own family I am getting so frustrated. This was evening time and I was getting ridiculous motion blur. I upped the shutter speed and then the images were dark, I upped the iso and then they were noisy. Changed my aperture and they were soft. I felt like a failure after this shoot Pity party for me....

SO... maybe bounce my flash off my reflector??? And yes it was my pop up flash... sorry, I will not do that again

well, does not matter whether you use manual or AV or TV, you still need to understand the basic principle of metering and exposure. Recently I just finished a roll of film. I have shot with DSLR for just over 2 years now and I have never done film. With film you cant really preview what you shot. So you need to get it right without trial and error which I think is what you are doing (up the shutter, open the aperture, up the ISO etc.).

If you are shooting without flash, the exposure of the subject is the key. I would use spot metering and point it the subject's forehead. I would set the exposure to anywhere from 0 to +1.

How do you get between 0 and +1? Then you can mess with the exposure triangle and decide what is the best solution. The faster your lens and the better your sensor, the more wiggle room you have.

If you shoot with flash, I probably would probably just meter the whole scene (the big box metering mode). Then your subject is probably underexposed before the flash. Adjust your flash power accordingly.

tmjjk · Jul 27, 2012

This was a very long shoot... After I was frustrated I changed the settings to aperture priority after awhile to check what I was doing wrong with the settings on manual.. hoping that would clue me in some. I guess these were shot then (sorry). I typically use the daylight white balance and adjust later in lightroom. I do have a grey card. I am pretty sure I set it to that.
I have a canon xs, my metering choices are evaluative, partial, and center weighted. I was set on partial.... haven't quite grasped how to choose the metering mode, not from lack of trying either. I am trying to learn exposure and metering. Also how to use my histogram. I am feeling at a loss. It seems the more I try and the more I learn, the worse my images are turning out... what the heck? I must have been just been lucky before. Thank you for any help, I do really appreciate it.

amolitor · Jul 27, 2012

Your problem was using the on-camera flash. The first one is quite nice. Angle them toward the sun a bit next time, so the shadows on one side of the face are different from the shadows on the other, as suggested.

Why would you use flash when you're got plenty of light? Any flash used in this sort of situation would be just to fill shadows a little bit (leaving them still shadow-like, but just not as dark) and would be a small flash off camera. You can accomplish much the same thing with reflectors, any more or less flat more or less white object set out of frame to bounce sunlight into the shadowed area(s).

tmjjk · Jul 27, 2012

amolitor said:
Your problem was using the on-camera flash. The first one is quite nice. Angle them toward the sun a bit next time, so the shadows on one side of the face are different from the shadows on the other, as suggested.

Why would you use flash when you're got plenty of light? Any flash used in this sort of situation would be just to fill shadows a little bit (leaving them still shadow-like, but just not as dark) and would be a small flash off camera. You can accomplish much the same thing with reflectors, any more or less flat more or less white object set out of frame to bounce sunlight into the shadowed area(s).

I have a 43" reflector that I was trying to use... and it cast a weird light as well. Here are some examples with the reflector (sooc... NO EDIT) I may even be placing the reflector in the wrong place. THANK YOU

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JClishe · Jul 28, 2012

The shots with the reflector are the best of the bunch, why didn't you post those first? Just make sure to crop the reflector out.

cgipson1 · Jul 28, 2012

I agree that the reflector shots look best. I downloaded the last shot to play with...

I found a bit too much green (probably from the grass) added a little magenta / red to kill that.... and added the tiniest amount of cyan to kill some excess yellow. Upped the contrast a bit, and lowered the overall exposure a tiny bit. A crop, of course! It did not need much...

Do you like this better?

tmjjk · Jul 30, 2012

cgipson1 said:
I agree that the reflector shots look best. I downloaded the last shot to play with...

I found a bit too much green (probably from the grass) added a little magenta / red to kill that.... and added the tiniest amount of cyan to kill some excess yellow. Upped the contrast a bit, and lowered the overall exposure a tiny bit. A crop, of course! It did not need much...

Do you like this better?

View attachment 15129

Yes I do Charlie... Thank you for taking the time.
There is still something. Its just not as clear and sharp as other images I've seen. It's a work in progress I know. As soon as I learn to manipulate the light in my favor, I think that should help quite a bit. Its so aggravating knowing what I want to see and not being able to produce it. Have no fear I will keep shooting!

amolitor · Jul 30, 2012

The light looks completely unnatural. Whether your using a strobe or just bouncing sunlight or whatever, you can see that there's a LOT of light coming from about 18 inches off the ground, 45 degrees to the camera. It's not evening, clearly, look at the rest of the frame. So, what IS it?

Charlie can fix the white balance all he wants, but it's not going to fix the fact that you're not selling the light at all.

If it's daytime and there is visible background of any substance, you pretty much have to let the sun be the key light. The light just Is Not Going To Sell otherwise -- we can see where the key light (i.e. the sun) is for the background, and it doesn't match the light on the faces.

Flash and reflectors should be used to gently fill shadows, not to Light The Subject. If the sun is a little diffuse or whatever, you could give it a bit of help with a carefully placed strobe, I suppose?

If you've got enough strobe to light everything, then by all means ignore the sun, shoot at flash sync speed stopped down, and let the strobes light everything. That does not appear to be the case here.

tmjjk · Jul 30, 2012

Amolitor... I am clueless (clearly) about flash. COMPLETELY... I do not even know what strobe is, but I will as soon as I post this... I will look it up and learn. I try to use natural light whenever I can, I shoot outdoors almost always. I see what you are saying about the light. I will absolutely try to take this shot in the opposite direction. My eye is very untrained at seeing the obvious... like the light source you could see. I cannot pick up the image quality in the LCD and its not until I see them on my pc monitor that I realize how bad they actually are. I have been shooting for about 4 months and still have so much to learn. So even if its a matter of pointing out the basics PLEASE do. I will learn and improve on the suggestions. Thank you.