Problem - 10D with 550EX w/omnibounce

[CeeCee]

I went to a wedding today to shoot some good pictures of the newly wed.

comming home was a disaster !

I used AV mode, mounted my flash and fired a testshot - which looked fine. Now i discover that all of the following are heavily underexposed - almost black.

I used a polarizer, an omnibounce and the E-TTL. It looks like crap most of the pictures. Unsharp and not very sellable.

What to do ? I usually shoot in RAW and in AV mode - with the sync set to 1/200.

I know that i should have checked during the shooting, but i didn´t.

Have any of you guys experienced problems with the 550EX of similar character ? And what do you suggest doing ?

Help is needed and very thankfully received.

With red ears and up for a second shooting.

[robertwgross]

Without knowing details of what you shot and the settings for each shot, it is impossible for anybody to tell you what went wrong.

I can only suggest this: When you shoot a wedding, study each image on the rear display immediately after capturing it. Study it for general appearance, but also study the histogram to see if it is normal. When you are starting at a new wedding chapel, do this on every shot, until you get at least ten in a row that are normal. After ten, then you can shoot more and study each time you change the general scene, like when you move to a reception hall.

I've seen many a newbie photographer that fits on their 550EX and then tries to shoot a reception dance floor subject at fifty feet. Then they get a bad shot and wonder why.

We don't know whether you shoot RAW or JPEG, so it is difficult to say whether anything extra can be saved in post-processing.

We don't know what lens you used, or what kind of autofocus points were used and what mechanisms might have been acting up.

It is for these several reasons why there are only a few photographers who do professional wedding photography successfully.

---Bob Gross---

[CeeCee]

Hi Bob

I follow your point of arguement.

I have done several wedding with fantastic results, but this one will haunt me.

I used only L-lenses as follows : 17-35 + 28-70 + 70-200 IS

I tried shooting RAW as i do always except today. I used at centerweighted metering, center AF-point, 100 ASA.

Sadly i had to turn to JPG - Auto (arrrghh) - cause things quickly evolved without me having solved the problem before the bride and groom came out the chapel. So i had to turn to JPG in auto mode - which is awfull i know for sure.

Normally i use RAW and converting to 16bit Tiffs - just to have the possibility to do excessive adjustment. This is not the case with these shots obviously.

Nothing can be done to this lousy material - which i barely can sell.

Therefore my ask for help is merely for the technical knowledge of you guys - have you experienced that the metering is suddenly untrustworthy. The reason why i put it this way is that some of the exposures are just about perfect - the next very unlike the previous, and the third even more uneven to my "pilotshot"

I prefer AV mode, RAW, E-TTL and a polarizer with omnibounce or Softbox

Shots that i shot with my 70-200 IS i shot on Manual and they turned out perfect - all of them. Most other shot were taken by the 28-70 (it might be that lens giving me the trouble)

And lastly a few groupshots with the 17-35

Thanks for any plausible advice - which i will examine under similiar settings as i had today.

Sincerely
Claus Stensgaard

[robertwgross]

I have done several wedding with fantastic results, but this one will haunt me.

So, what did you do differently?

When I shoot a wedding, I stick to my known formula. If I want to experiment away from the formula, I shoot some test shots long before the ceremony.


Normally i use RAW and converting to 16bit Tiffs - just to have the possibility to do excessive adjustment. This is not the case with these shots obviously.

Shooting RAW allows you more room to adapt the poorly exposed image into something good. But 16-bit TIF only gives you finer resolution, not more range.

---Bob Gross---

[CeeCee]

Hi Bob

Yes i know about shooting of a known formula.

Today was, by mistake, taken with a little careless shooting - meaning that i did not check the exposures.

Normally i shoot in AV / RAW / 100 / Centerweight or handheld metered /

I do really believe that i had as momentarely malfunction. I tried to reproduce the same sort of exposures tonight - and nothing is wrong. hmmmm.....

I know about RAW and Tiff - but working in 8 bit and 16 are two different worlds when having to adjust the e.g highlights - or any other "level"/"curves" adjustments in the exposure.

It freakin´ easy to ruin "small pearls" in 8 bit

[robertwgross]

There are all sorts of potential problems that can happen with flash exposure. I've seen all sorts of weird things happen that could not be reproduced, nor the cause isolated. If the flash unit is sitting oddly on the camera's hot shoe, then that would explain a lot. The 550EX can come up and not "talk" to the camera body. If the batteries were marginal, then that would explain all sorts of logic errors.

When arriving early at a church wedding, I always assemble my rig, and then fire off two or three test shots before anybody important is around to comment. If I get normal looking results on the rear display, then I go ahead and shoot the wedding. If any test shot is odd for any reason, then I still have time to experiment. If necessary, I have a backup 420EX that I can shoot the wedding with.

I have a rule/theory that I cannot prove: Just because the Ready lamp is on, do not automatically believe that it is ready.

---Bob Gross---

[RichardtheSane]

I have a rule/theory that I cannot prove: Just because the Ready lamp is on, do not automatically believe that it is ready.

---Bob Gross---

Bob, I have been shooting the past couple of weeks with your theory in mind and I believe that it is accurate... certainly with marginal batteries.

Maybe this is what has happened with this wedding... batteries seem OK, but the flash has not been completely ready. In my experience any close up (head shot at 50mm etc) shots will still be OK, as will any when the flash is only doing a little fill... it is the shots where the flash is pumping real power out that suffer. A lot.

[CeeCee]

I cannot argue against, so i went buying 8 new pro-batteries 2300 Mah. Have 3 more weddings that i cannot afford to ruin

Thanks Bob and Richard