550EX... any messing necessary?

[Steveo31]

I posted in another subforum here, but no responses, so I'll reword. :)

I am somewhat new to the flash world, and the 550EX is the best on the market for canon, no? Do I need to do any kind of compensation? So for example, I'm talkin photos of a baseball team. I need to have their faces lit (duh) and the sun from above is a problem. I'm going to spot on their faces, and after that, do I need to FEL/Exposure lock?

[robertwgross]

I am somewhat new to the flash world, and the 550EX is the best on the market for canon, no?

It's about the best for Canon, at least as far as Canon is concerned.


Do I need to do any kind of compensation? So for example, I'm talkin photos of a baseball team. I need to have their faces lit (duh) and the sun from above is a problem. I'm going to spot on their faces, and after that, do I need to FEL/Exposure lock?

Steve, are you talking about sports action, or are you talking about a team photo?

If it is sports action, then you'd be using a very long lens and it might be well beyond the effective flash range.

If it is for a team photo, then it ought to work fine. If you use a very wide lens, then the 550EX might not be able to zoom that wide, even with the diffuser panel. On the other hand, a very wide lens puts you closer to the faces. I'm guessing that a moderate focal length might work best. You'll probably have to experiment with FEL (or not) to see what works best. Light-skinned faces sometimes take a small (+0.5) exposure compensation. Dark-skinned faces sometimes take -1.0. Again, you'll have to experiment a bit. Make yourself a bracketing plan of things to try, and shoot by the plan.

---Bob Gross---

[slin100]

Hmm, you have an EOS 3, so what follows may not necessarily apply.

In my experience, I've found that the 550EX does a very good job automatically providing fill flash outdoors. It, by default, provides -1 1/2 stops of fill at EV 13 and above. So, in your particular case, you may not have to use FEL. If you don't like -1 1/2 stops of FEC you can disable auto fill-reduction and dial in your own FEC.

When the light level is below that, such as indoors, the 550EX behaves much less predictably. It heavily biases exposure based on its evaluation of the preflash on the selected AF point(s), so focus and recompose is a big no-no. There are two exceptions: 1) when FEL is used, exposure is based on the partial metering area, 2) when focusing manually or when AF is remapped to the * button, exposure is center-weighted average.

I generally use method 2) to get center-weighted averaging. Even so, I've found that +2/3 FEC is usually necessary. I determined this impirically by comparing histograms of an off-color blank wall captured with and without flash. Only after dialing in the +2/3 FEC did the image captured with flash come close to matching the image captured without. It's possible I could have a defective 550EX, but underexposure seems to be a common problem experienced by many.

The irritating thing about this is having to adjust FEC whenever going indoors and canceling when outdoors. I've blown out a few shots outdoors when I forgot to cancel FEC.

[Steveo31]

Yeah, shoulda said. I'm doin' portraits.

Thanks for the insight. I think the only way to see is to do it :)