First time speed light owner. (430exII). How much can I learn overnight

Hi

I'm shooting a casual senior portrait of for a friend tomorrow. I've been shooting for a few years, and I'll do a good job, but I just bought the 430 exII on the way home from work and want to use it tomorrow. I've never used a strobe before, and I don't have the equipment to shoot off camera yet.

Any tips will help.

1. The shoot will take place at 3pm (it gets dark here about 6pm. The sun will be blocked by trees and there should be some very light cloud coverage. All that is great.

2. I'll be shooting against a specific brick wall outside that seems to be popular with the kids at the school.

3. I'll also take some pics with him sitting on large rocks with trees and athletic fields in the background.

4. I'll be using my 6D, the 28-135 IS USM and the 430exII.

5. He (the student) is African American with medium to dark brown skin and brown eyes. I don't know what he'll be wearing. His mom (who I work with) says he will have a couple outfits.

Thanks for any advice.

Well. If you want to keep it simple for the time being, I would suggest you use the AE-Lock (star) button in conjunction with ETTL on your flash.

Set shutter at 1/200.
Set aperture to whatever you want.
Center point your camera to the person's skin. Hit the Star button.
Focus on eyes.
Shoot.

Try it out.

You don't have a lot of time. I would suggest to put your camera on P mode, ISO 400 and the flash on ETTL. At least learn how to adjust FEC or Flash Exposure Compensation on your flash. I don't like walls because of shadows but you are shooting midday. Just make sure they are not to close to it.

Set the FEC to -1. Take the shot and check the image on the LCD. Check to see if the exposure of the person looks OK. Adjust FEC + or - until you are happy with the shot.

Oh Yeah. Try a few without the flash and the normal way you would shoot just to see.

Here is my little tip - for outdoor pictures to add a touch of fill flash -

1.Just park your flash on the camera, pointing forward and put it in ETTL mode via the Mode button on the flash & activate HSS via the HSS/>>> button (so you can shoot at any shutter speed as you normally would)
2. Using the exposure comp button on your camera or your flash - set it to (-)1
2. Take your pictures as you would normally - if you find that the flash is showing up stronger than your liking, just lower to Exposure Compensation another half to one stop.

If you are taking pictures indoors - point your flash to any surface that is neutral in color and not too far (ceiling/wall etc) and take your pictures normally. Again, use exposure compensation to increase or lower the flash effect in the picture.

Hi, Assuming overall pretty bright conditions - and - that you will choose a wide aperture, I agree that enabling HSS is probably vital - the 6D's max sync speed is 1/180th.

There was a wrinkle with the old 5DII in that when HSS was enabled, it actually kicked in to operation AT max sync speed, rather than only when max sync speed was exceeded, as should have been the case. This is a great opportunity to check whether or not Canon have sorted this fault with the 6D.

There is a c 2.5 stop power/range penalty when HSS is in actual operation, but of course ETTL II compensates automatically, provided you remain within the reduced HSS specific speedlite range. For modest fill power, HSS is usually not a problem, but your batteries will deplete faster than usual. Good luck.

digital paradise wrote in post #16672086
You don't have a lot of time. I would suggest to put your camera on P mode, ISO 400 and the flash on ETTL. At least learn how to adjust FEC or Flash Exposure Compensation on your flash. I don't like walls because of shadows but you are shooting midday. Just make sure they are not to close to it.

Set the FEC to -1. Take the shot and check the image on the LCD. Check to see if the exposure of the person looks OK. Adjust FEC + or - until you are happy with the shot.

digital paradise wrote in post #16672097
Oh Yeah. Try a few without the flash and the normal way you would shoot just to see.

^^ This is the best advice in the thread so far. Not that the other stuff is wrong per se, but I would go this route, and say so with experience with essentially the same equipment and project.

As DP said, my objective would be to set the camera's exposure with the flash off then allow the flash to fill in shadows. Keep the subject off the wall 5-10 feet to avoid a shadow cast by the flash. I would use manual exposure, but if you are not comfortable with that P mode would work fine.

You will not need anything faster than 1/180 SS to freeze a sitting subject. In this situation, HSS is doing nothing more than decreasing flash output (which is better accomplished by using FEC), increasing recycle time, and depleting batteries.

Try to shoot between 50 and 85mm and make sure the flash is zooming with the lens. This is a setting on the flash and you will hear the flash move after you change the zoom setting on the camera's lens and half press the shutter release.


edit: I'd make sure the kid isn't wearing white. Super light colors can fool the camera/flash and cause too little light to be blasted from the flash.

if you can find an hour today to go down to the craft store and buy some foam, you can put something like this together. It will help soften the shadows on the subject and background.

foam costs .99 I'd recommend getting velcro from a hardware store since the little tabs shown in the picture weren't very sticky. The stuff from the hardware store is much better.

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