MT59
31st of May 2008 (Sat), 21:32
OK, as you can see from my sig line, still shooting with my 300D. Hey, it still works great and has another year warranty, so why switch now?
Anyway, equipment choice aside, I only just recently finally purchased an E-TTL (II) compatible flash unit (the Sunpak listed in the sig line). Prior to now, I've been using an older Vivitar manual flash (with a Wien hotshoe saver - natch), shooting in Manual at 1/100 or 1/200 and altering aperature to match. Shooting in Raw helped guarantee I could recover any shots where I didn't hit the aperture just right.
I've shot a few indoor events (non-paid, pleasure type stuff) with the flash. The first one was a large kids group thing in church. For the most part, just put it in "P" mode, turned on the flash and 90% of them came out just perfect.
Next time I tried, at an indoor party for my daughter, 90% of them came out just too dark. Sadly, I was shooting JPG so I had to toss a few decent shots. Once I got home, I did a post-mortem and read through the EOS Flash Bible again to try to figure out what I was doing wrong. I thought I pretty well had it nailed with the following strategy and tested it at the house:
"P" mode, center focus point only, aim focus point at desired neutral tone (typically a face or other midtoned object), hit the FEL button to pop the flash, recompose, half-shutter to focus, then fire. Seemed to work great at the house...... then I read the manual for my camera, which recommended:
Aim at subject, half-press shutter to focus and keep holding it. Re-aim as necessary for flash, press and hold the FEL button (now you're holding both the FEL and shutter buttons down), re-aim again and fully press the shutter button. Besides being rather cumbersome to perform, I seemed to notice that the lens wanted to re-focus when I hit the FEL button. At home, the shots I tried this with (at another event) were out of focus.
OK, after a long explanation, remember that this is a 300D, which has a slightly different flash program than even it's more capable 10D sibling and others after it. Anyone that used an E-TTL flash with a 300D for a while with good results want to clue me in on what I should be doing? I have another event tomorrow (again, unpaid, but slightly more important than the previous events) and I'd really like to avoid a lot of post-processing of dark shots or, worse yet, a lot of deleting of badly focused ones.
Sorry for the long-winded question. :-)
Anyway, equipment choice aside, I only just recently finally purchased an E-TTL (II) compatible flash unit (the Sunpak listed in the sig line). Prior to now, I've been using an older Vivitar manual flash (with a Wien hotshoe saver - natch), shooting in Manual at 1/100 or 1/200 and altering aperature to match. Shooting in Raw helped guarantee I could recover any shots where I didn't hit the aperture just right.
I've shot a few indoor events (non-paid, pleasure type stuff) with the flash. The first one was a large kids group thing in church. For the most part, just put it in "P" mode, turned on the flash and 90% of them came out just perfect.
Next time I tried, at an indoor party for my daughter, 90% of them came out just too dark. Sadly, I was shooting JPG so I had to toss a few decent shots. Once I got home, I did a post-mortem and read through the EOS Flash Bible again to try to figure out what I was doing wrong. I thought I pretty well had it nailed with the following strategy and tested it at the house:
"P" mode, center focus point only, aim focus point at desired neutral tone (typically a face or other midtoned object), hit the FEL button to pop the flash, recompose, half-shutter to focus, then fire. Seemed to work great at the house...... then I read the manual for my camera, which recommended:
Aim at subject, half-press shutter to focus and keep holding it. Re-aim as necessary for flash, press and hold the FEL button (now you're holding both the FEL and shutter buttons down), re-aim again and fully press the shutter button. Besides being rather cumbersome to perform, I seemed to notice that the lens wanted to re-focus when I hit the FEL button. At home, the shots I tried this with (at another event) were out of focus.
OK, after a long explanation, remember that this is a 300D, which has a slightly different flash program than even it's more capable 10D sibling and others after it. Anyone that used an E-TTL flash with a 300D for a while with good results want to clue me in on what I should be doing? I have another event tomorrow (again, unpaid, but slightly more important than the previous events) and I'd really like to avoid a lot of post-processing of dark shots or, worse yet, a lot of deleting of badly focused ones.
Sorry for the long-winded question. :-)