Guys, need help with 550EX

[daaaveman]

OK, so I got asked to shoot an event tomorrow. There is some big-whig sailor coming in. Apparently he's the captain of the America's Cup Team. They're having a happy hour and I will be following him around shooting candids of him with the folks who drop by. All the money goes to the Leukemia Society btw.

So I'll be shooting in a hotel banquet room. I'm told 10'-12' ceiling - white. I've got a 300d with a 24-70mmL and a nifty 50. Planning on shooting the zoom mainly. I've borrowed a 550EX which I will shoot from a stroboframe with an offshoe cord.

So, the deal is, I haven't used the 550EX before and I know there's a learning curve. Can you guys give me some suggestions on settings to use with it. I'm planning on using mainly bounce off the ceiling as long as I haven't been lied to about it being white and of a reasonable height. Is this the right plan?

I'll spend tonight reading the 550EX manual but could sure use any advice you guys are willing to give with camera/flash settings. Like I say, it's just candids of some people at a happy hour so I don't see any major hurdles except flash exposure.

BTW, I know how to read a histogram. I'm just not going to get more than an hour or so to practice with the 550.

Help me, oh wise ones!!!!

[tim]

Flash photography takes practice and experience to do well, your best bet is to do as many test shots as you can in the time you have available.

There are two ways to use the flash, depending on the situation:
- As the main lighting.
- As a fill-in flash.

If you use the flash as the main lighting you tend to get flat, boring pictures. Bounced flash helps a lot with this, especially if you use a diffuser. If you do this, shoot in manual mode. Select whatever aperture you want for your DOF, and depending on whether you want the background to be well exposed set the flash for maybe 1/80th (background is exposed) or 1/250th (lights the main subject more).

If you want to use it as a fill-in flash, use it on the bracket but dial the FEC a couple of stops. That'll remove shadows under the eyes, and will expose for the background as well as the main subject.

Like I said, flash photography can be hard, so take these ideas, play around, experiment, and find out what works for you :)

[robertwgross]

Get to the event room as early as you can, and shoot some test shots with the flash bounced and straight. It doesn't matter who is in the shot, even if it is a waiter passing by. This allows you to work on distances and lighting against the histogram.

If you are shooting a lot, I recommend to have a pocketful of AA batteries. During a wedding, I generally rotate through about three sets of four AA batteries.

---Bob Gross---

[DaveG]

OK, so I got asked to shoot an event tomorrow. There is some big-whig sailor coming in. Apparently he's the captain of the America's Cup Team. They're having a happy hour and I will be following him around shooting candids of him with the folks who drop by. All the money goes to the Leukemia Society btw.

So I'll be shooting in a hotel banquet room. I'm told 10'-12' ceiling - white. I've got a 300d with a 24-70mmL and a nifty 50. Planning on shooting the zoom mainly. I've borrowed a 550EX which I will shoot from a stroboframe with an offshoe cord.

So, the deal is, I haven't used the 550EX before and I know there's a learning curve. Can you guys give me some suggestions on settings to use with it. I'm planning on using mainly bounce off the ceiling as long as I haven't been lied to about it being white and of a reasonable height. Is this the right plan?

I'll spend tonight reading the 550EX manual but could sure use any advice you guys are willing to give with camera/flash settings. Like I say, it's just candids of some people at a happy hour so I don't see any major hurdles except flash exposure.

BTW, I know how to read a histogram. I'm just not going to get more than an hour or so to practice with the 550.

Help me, oh wise ones!!!!


What camera are your using? That makes a big difference. If it's an E-TTL 2 camera (20D, 1D Mark II) then you are going to get much more consistent results. If it's older like a 10D then the exposures are TERRIBLE. You'll point it there and it'll overexpose by two stops, turn and point it there and it'll be under by two stops, and there's no explicable reason for this nonsense!

So, the most important control you can learn tonight is how you use the Flash Exposure Compensation (page 86) because you are going to have to play it like a piano. First make sure that the flash is NOT on Master or Slave, but in the normal position or you can't get at the FEC control. Turn the flash on and push the sel/set button. If you push it once you should be right in the FEC and you can use the + and - buttons to adjust the flash output. If you push the sel/set button more than once it'll take you beyond FEC to FEB (Page 88 ) which means Flash Exposure Bracketing. You don't want this and you'll have to cycle back to FEC by pressing the sel/set button again.

Trust the histogram NOT your review screen exposure, especially if you are using a 10D.

Use RAW. With RAW you get much greater exposure latitude than with a jpeg. If you DO get over exposures then you have a much better chance of saving them if you start with a RAW file. Jpegs are great as long as you don't make any mistakes, which is one of the many reasons why I don't use jpegs.

If you check your review and the flash exposure is WAY WAY over - the review will be virtually white - what probably has happened is that the flash in not completely seated in the remote cord's hotshoe. It's also possible that the remote cord isn't seated in the camera's hotshoe but that's less likely. In any case the flash has backed out of the hotshoe just a bit - enough to make a firing contact, but not enough to give a correct exposure. This tends to happen when you are flipping from vertical to horizontal and back again with a Stroboframe. I point this out because if you see this "white screen" in the middle of a shoot you don't have time to figure it out!

When I'm using the 550 but not in a bounce position, and have a zoom lens on the camera, I'll change the focal length on the lens, just while I'm standing around waiting. Assuming that I didn't have the flash in manual zoom, the auto zoom in the flash will react to that change in focal length and I can hear it. That tells me that the flash and the camera are speaking together and everything is hooked up properly. If I have the flash in a bounce position or on Master then the flash defaults to the widest zoom setting and it won't make any noise. I'll tell you that there was plenty of "What's wrong? What's wrong?" before I figured THAT out!

[robertwgross]

If you check your review and the flash exposure is WAY WAY over - the review will be virtually white - what probably has happened is that the flash in not completely seated in the remote cord's hotshoe. It's also possible that the remote cord isn't seated in the camera's hotshoe but that's less likely.

I think you meant the off camera shoe cord here in two places.

---Bob Gross---

[DaveG]

I think you meant the off camera shoe cord here in two places.

---Bob Gross---

Yes. It was an awkward sentence by me, with its intent being better clarity. Prehaps not.