Help with light and afternoon shadows...

[cowboylife]

Did some family pics with my buddy. Not really happy with the results. I think my apperture was not right, I would have prefered more bokeh. Also, I was using my 580 but I have a lightsphere on and I think it was not giving me the desired effect.

Should I have positioned them differently? The sun was to the right of the picture. Should I have taken off the flash diffuser and just shot it head on? Help please, I really don't like how these came out.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f282/tylerpebley/IMG_0382.jpg

[Mcary]

First thing you either want your subjects all the way in shadow or all the way in the light so you get even lighting.

For this shot I would of had them move forwared about two feet. I would then set my fash to highspeed sync and shot at around F 5.6 and played around with out put + or - on the flash until I got the desired amount of fill.

Mike

[Dermit]

You are on the right track... shallower DOF would have helped. Also, yes, take the lightsphere off the flash in the outdoors and shoot straight on. If it winds up looking too harsh you can dial it down. Mcary has great suggestions. Even if you get them all in solid open shade you will usually still get some directional lighting. If you are stuck with what you shot here then you need to think how to get the extremes of the dynamic range of the light to be closer together. One way is to do like Mcary said, get closer if needed to help the flash reach the subjects. Also, you can underexpose the background/ambient light by cranking up the shutter speed and/or dialing in a lower ISO (which should cause the aperture to open up more, which is what you want anyway for shallower DOF). By underexposing the background a stop or so and letting the flash expose the subjects properly it will help them 'pop' a bit. Another thing you can do is invest in a scrim/refector kit to shade on the spot.

Watch your backgrounds.... you could have easily avoided that car back there. Get dad in a little tighter, and do something different with mom's hands. Seeing an open hand flat to the viewer is always a distraction. Find a position more like dad has.

[Curtis N]

You gotta lose the tupperware when you're outdoors. Without something to bounce off, it will do nothing but waste light (reduced range, slower flash recycling and less battery life). Direct flash is best for fill in the sun.

Shooting at 90 degrees to the sun is generally not recommended because of the harsh shadows, but shots like this can be made more acceptable if you properly meter the ambient to avoid blowouts and add plenty of fill.

In this shot the ambient is overexposed because the camera was metering mostly on the shaded parts of your subjects. Metering the plant residue in the foreground at about +1 would have probably been better.

Next time try to get the sun behind your subjects, meter the sunlit background and you'll probably have a better outcome.

[InspiredGraphix]

I agree with everything said above.

If you could not move from where to were, i would have suggest shooting -1 to -1 1/2 stops and boosting FEC to smooth it all out.

As said, it is very hard to shoot in these conditions, but something you will learn to handle in time. Just remember that in conditions like this, your camera will almost always overexpose highlights. Forcing your camera to expose highlights properly and then pulling up everything else possible with fill flash, is really the only way to do it.

Rob