sigler wrote:
Greetings,
I'm a proud 10d owner. I'm pretty good with Photoshop, but I'm by no means a pro. (Video is my money maker.)
My sister is getting married and she is on a very tight budget. I will probably shoot her pictures with my 10d (for free
)
What should I get to light up with formal pictures in the church? I need to purchase a flash...I hear the 550 is better than the 420 (?), is this true?
Also, what about studio lights? How difficult would this be? I would also like to get studio lights for my home...we have a new baby boy.
"Lighting" is a complex subject...can anybody help a lighting newbie?
Thanks,
Rob
You are correct that lighting is a complex subject.
Classic lighting for portraiture involves a main light, a fill light, a background light, and a hair light. Deciding where and how much to use these four basic lights is well beyond the scope of a forum post, but there are a number of good books on the subject. My favorite seems to no longer be in print, unfortunately, but is an old Kodak book on portrait lighting.
But if you know what you want the four lights to do, then you can think about alternatives. For example, a reflector panel can be your fill light, and ambient room lights can be your hair and background lights. But the one thing you can't get around is this: Your main light has to be well to one side of the camera.
With that requirement established, there are several ways to meet it. The cheapest is to use a camera mounted flash, pointed to a reflector that is at one side of the camera as the main light, with another reflector as the fill light. The 550 swivels as well as tilting upwards, and I have bounced the light from it off adjacent walls so that the light reaching the subject is coming from one side rather than straight on. The 550 isn't cheap, but you'll need the swivel and the power of it. At least the 550 also doubles as a regular portable flash. I would get the remote cord and put it on a bracket so that if I needed to I could pull it off the bracket and hand-hold it pointed at the reflector.
You could also spend more and get the remote wireless transmitter, which will maintain E-TTL. For portraits of one or two people, this probably isn't necessary, but for portraits of groups, the flash won't be powerful enough to reflect off a panel sufficiently far from the subject and camera to light the whole group. You'll need to put the flash where you want the light coming from, and that will require the remote transmitter.
Or, you can get a stand-mounted monolight and a long sync cord. This is probably cheaper than the 550, and certainly cheaper than the 550 plus the remote transmitter. But it isn't portable. If you aren't going to do studio-type portraits a lot, it may not be worth the cost and the time it takes to learn how to use it effectively.
Whatever course you take, make sure you practice with it extensively before the event. You don't want to be making it up as you go between the ceremony and the reception, unless you want pictures of angry people.
Rick "who has made do with hand-held flashes more than once" Denney
, I think it was called the traveler bee. 
