What setting to use??

[veggie_15]

Please forgive me, I am new to all of this. I recently purchased a Rebel XT. It's been about 6 months since I purchased it and I decided to buy some studio lights to go with it in attempts to do my family portraits at home. I have 3 lights (2 softbox, one umbrella) I bought the wireless flash sync as well, all strobes fire without any problem. My question is about the settings on my camera. Which setting should I use. I've tried what I know, and all of the pictures are coming out overexposed (too much light, and washed out.) I've tried using just two lights and even just one light, but the results are all the same. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!!

[Wilt]

If the shots are overexposed you could A) reduced the output from the lights, B) use a smaller aperture on the lens, C) both A and B. You are experiencing the value of having a flash meter...take an incident light flash reading with the meter and determine how much to turn down the lights or what aperture to use; your workflow is now the 'trial and error' approach that newbies to electronic flash studio lights and who have no flash meter have to endure.

Be sure you shutter speed is 1/200 or slower when using electronic flash with the XT

[Mcary]

If your pictures are coming out overexposed you need to either use a lower F-stop IE F-11 instead of F-8 and or you need to reduce the amount of light being put out by your strobes or both.

Try the following
Set-up on Strobe at 50% power
Set your Camera to F-8 at 1/200 second
Take a test shot . Is it over or under exposed?
Over exposed lower the power of your strobe to 25% T
Under exposed increase the power to 75%
Take another test shot.
Repeat until you get a good exposure

I often use my AB800s at 1/32 or 1/16th power when shooting at Large Apertures such F 2.2-F-4 and usually don't have them past 1/2 power even when shooting at F-8 unless I'm using them for background lights.
On the other hand using my ARB800 with 56"moon unit usually requires having the flash at full power and sometimes even shooting at ISO250-400 depending on the F-stop I want to use.

Mike

[ueb0258]

Are you shooting in Manual? If so you could try 1/200, F8-11, and ISO 100 to start out with. If you are shooting in the other modes the camera is compensating for ambient light and setting the cameras setting for it and not the flashes, introduce the flash and now your overexposed. Try it in manual if you are not already.