settings for a reception

[Jinx]

Last night I took my Canon 10D and 550 flash with me to a friends wedding. I tried various settings with the camera and really was not coming up with any that I felt was producing good results. I tried direct flash as well as bounce. BTW, the hall was pitch black except for one single flashing strobe the DJ had.

I have another wedding (as a guest) coming up in two weeks and would like to try this again. Can any experienced wedding photographers give me an idea of what settings to start with?

Thanks ...

[rdenney]

Jinx wrote:
Last night I took my Canon 10D and 550 flash with me to a friends wedding. I tried various settings with the camera and really was not coming up with any that I felt was producing good results. I tried direct flash as well as bounce. BTW, the hall was pitch black except for one single flashing strobe the DJ had.

I have another wedding (as a guest) coming up in two weeks and would like to try this again. Can any experienced wedding photographers give me an idea of what settings to start with?

Thanks ...



Personally, I'd use manual mode with a shutter speed of 1/60 and an aperture of f/5.6 or f/8 depending on the lens and the typcal distances. I might also set the flash compensation to a stop underexposed if the highlights are getting consistently blown out.

I would also use a Lumiquest bounce arrangement to soften the light a bit, which might also help with blown-out highlights.

With the compensation, the images may seem dark, but I'd bet all important tonality can be brought up with a nudge of the tone curve in Photoshop. But if the bride's dress is blown out, it will always be featureless white no matter what other adjustments you make. Wedding are tough--it's often impossible to maintain texture in the bride's dress without the groom's tux disappearing into inky shadow. But I'd rather lose the tux than the dress. Remember, the #1 person you have to please is the bride's mother, followed closely by the bride herself. The groom is WAY down that list.

The more you can separate the flash from the camera, the more detail in that dress you'll be able to see.

Overexposure is the negative shooter's mantra. Film nearly always has latitude in that direction, and labs can print down the proofs so that those highlights come out. But digital is more likes slides--if the highlights aren't in the original image they are gone forever.

Rick "shunning overexposure" Denney

[Jinx]

Sorry, I should have also mentioned that I use the Canon 24-70 L 2.8.

I need to go back through them today while I'm a bit more awake, but I shot in Av, Tv, and program, and auto modes ... just so that I could compare the data. I'm too new at this to attempt to think I would know the correct combination of ISO, shutter and aperture settings.

This next week I'll purchase a diffuser and give your settings a shot to see how they work out.

Thanks for the help.

[rdenney]

Jinx wrote:
Sorry, I should have also mentioned that I use the Canon 24-70 L 2.8.

I need to go back through them today while I'm a bit more awake, but I shot in Av, Tv, and program, and auto modes ... just so that I could compare the data. I'm too new at this to attempt to think I would know the correct combination of ISO, shutter and aperture settings.

This next week I'll purchase a diffuser and give your settings a shot to see how they work out.

Thanks for the help.

One weakness of the Canon flash system is that it doesn't use distance information to calculate flash power. Rather it uses the measured scene luminance from a preflash. The downside to Canon's approach is that if you have one really light-colored subject in the middle of a sea of darkness, it will tend to overexpose the light-colored item just as it would if the lights were continuous. If you were photographing a scene with ambient lighting, and you had a small white subject with a dense black background, the camera will be fooled by the high amount of blackness and try to pull it up to middle gray. This will take the white subject right out of the range of the sensor and leave you blank white. Negative films which are universally popular with wedding photogs who use film is pretty safe from this problem because it has so much latitude for overexposure, but digital cameras do not have this latitude.

So, just as if the scene were lit by ambient light, you have to compensate when the scene does not evaluate (using whatever metering method) to 18% gray.

Here is where Nikon frankly has the advantage by using distance information from the AF system to set the flash rather than by measuring the scene. Funnily enough, the original automatic Canon speedlite from back in the early 70's did the same thing by attaching a mechanical sensor ring to the focusing barrel of the compatible lenses.

But you can correct the problem by treating the scene as you would if it was light with continuous lighting--if you have a small white subject in the middle of a sea of black, you compensate by selecting an exposure a stop or even two less than what the meter indicates.

I seem to recall that one of the custom functions will let you put flash compensation on the thumbwheel, just as ambient exposure compensation is on the thumbwheel. If I use an E-TTL system for weddings, that's what I'll do.

Rick "who still uses medium format for weddings but who does them as rarely as possible, and only for friends" Denney

[RichardtheSane]

I might be wrong, but as far as I am aware the flash will work in conjunction with partial metering.
With that in mind if your subject doesn't fill the majority of the frame you could switch to partial metering, meter your subject then recompose with FE lock. An alternative is to change focus point but with only 7 points you are limited.
I have used this a few times with a degree of success, what does anyone else think of this?

[rdenney]

RichardtheSane wrote:
I might be wrong, but as far as I am aware the flash will work in conjunction with partial metering.
With that in mind if your subject doesn't fill the majority of the frame you could switch to partial metering, meter your subject then recompose with FE lock. An alternative is to change focus point but with only 7 points you are limited.
I have used this a few times with a degree of success, what does anyone else think of this?

I'll try it next time it comes up. The beauty of digital, is that experimentation is free with instant feedback.

Rick "who is sure that the E-TTL works with whatever metering method is in use" Denney