Night Time Flash Question

So I was at the "Wild Lights" here in Detroit. Basically they convert the zoo into a big light display.

I took some test shots of the people I was with with lights behind them and my 580ex II on my Canon 5D Mark III.

I will post some example shots once I get home but the basics are this. I started out in Av mode (I usually don't do this but since I don't use flash much I sometimes mess up a bit). I set exposure compensation to -2 and flash exposure compensation initially to -1 I believe. I was at ISO 1600 F2.0

This resulted in the flash being far too powerful on my subject. I am not certain of the shutter speed but I don't believe it reached its limit (I'll check).

I then dialed down exposure compensation to -2 and the result was pretty much identical.

So then I headed over to my trusty manual mode (on camera) and set the shutter speed to 1/60th ISO 1600 and F2.0 and exposure compensation to -1. The result was pretty darn perfect. Here is the shot that turned out well:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/CeFY​4S

When shooting at night with background lights (Christmas lights,street lights,neon lights) and you have a speedlight or strobe . You drag your shutter. Google "drag shutter speed " you'll get a number of YouTube videos about it.

Heya,

Yea I wouldn't shoot AV with flash. AV will attempt to exposure ambient, and ETTL flash will attempt to expose subject. You'll find inconsistent results and not really get a nice blend. Manual for flash all the way. Set camera to ambient light and depth of field needs. Set flash to subject exposure (be it fill, or key).

I would have done two things.

1) Open the shutter more. Get more ambient light for the lights, to reduce how much ISO you need. Since the flash is the exposure time, it won't matter what your shutter is for the subjects, and only wild movement will blur the lights really. If you have a lens with IS, this is even better. But this reduces need for ISO. Overall gives more options for controlling ambient light so that your flash is less obvious. You could combine the slower shutter and higher ISO to get even more ambient light, so that your blended flash at a fill setting, would look more natural even. This essentially is "dragging the shutter."

2) Gel that flash, probably with a CTO 1/4th or something if it were me. Warms it up. Helps the flash not look cold compared to the xmas lights, so the temperatures are not so different and obvious.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #17829335
2) Gel that flash, probably with a CTO 1/4th or something if it were me. Warms it up. Helps the flash not look cold compared to the xmas lights, so the temperatures are not so different and obvious.

you can actually do that in post.

Here is a good example of dragging the shutter.

http://neilvn.com …ues/dragging-the-shutter/

Looks pretty good to me. You got the basics of controlling ambient and separately down which is most important thing. Speaking of dragging the shutter I'm looking closely at the lights. F Stop was 2 so you must have had your 35 on. I don't know if that is just the bokeh but it seems I see a bit of camera shake. The flash froze your subjects but won't have the juice to overpower the lights. I could be wrong. Without IS the slower you shoot the more subject to shake. I have no issue shooting up to ISO 6400 with my 5D3. That is how I compensate.

When you said you set the exposure compensation to -2 did you mean FEC?

just one guy's opinion, but dragging the shutter is only important when shutter speeds are pretty long. At 1/60 it doesn't really matter. In fact, 1/60 used to be pretty much the standard sync speed for 35mm cameras.

i think you have found the sweet spot, and that is exactly how I would have approached the shot. Only thing that looks off is that the flash isn't illuminating the lower part of subjects bodies. You might have had the flash tilted up just a touch, or maybe it is zoomed in a bit. If neither of those were the case, maybe you can zoom the flash head out a bit manually and still use ETTL for power regulation.

might put your subjects a little more off to the side and bend your knees a bit so the lights are more in the middle of the frame.

edit: i've always equated "dragging the shutter" with second curtain and longer shutter speeds, so i may not be on the same page as the others recommending it. In the case I am thinking of, second curtain keeps the human subjects in place until the flash fires.

PhilF wrote in post #17829398
you can actually do that in post.

You can - but its much easier to take 10 seconds to attach a bit of plastic (and maybe adjust WB in camera) than it is to selectively adjust WB on a picture

Take a few dozen pics and that selectively Ambient/flash white balancing takes half an hour or so - much longer than sticking a bit of coloured plastic to the flash head.

Echo63 wrote in post #17833697
You can - but its much easier to take 10 seconds to attach a bit of plastic (and maybe adjust WB in camera) than it is to selectively adjust WB on a picture.

Sounds easy, except when you're looking for a nearly invisible bit of plastic film in a camera bag in the dark, and you can't tell which gel is which, and it's freezing so you have to take off your gloves and fit it to the holder, and then your frozen fingers drop it in the snow and the wind blows it 15 feet away, and all while your subjects are standing still, getting colder and thinking you're a git for not taking the damn picture 2 minutes ago. Which option is easier can be situational.

always best to get in right in camera than in post
or as close as you can

absplastic wrote in post #17835041
Sounds easy, except when you're looking for a nearly invisible bit of plastic film in a camera bag in the dark, and you can't tell which gel is which, and it's freezing so you have to take off your gloves and fit it to the holder, and then your frozen fingers drop it in the snow and the wind blows it 15 feet away, and all while your subjects are standing still, getting colder and thinking you're a git for not taking the damn picture 2 minutes ago. Which option is easier can be situational.

you make a good point - but my gear always goes back in the same place - gels are in order in the supplied canon wallet (600EX) first sleeve is CTO, 2nd sleeve is 1/2 and 1/4 CTO (all marked too) 3rd sleeve is CTB and 4th is the others, Urban Vapour, Plusgreen, ND, Diffusion etc.

and its still easier adding the gel and taking a minute, than taking a minute per picture to colour correct just a spot in the middle - it may not be convenient at the time though.

if your not running a 600 with its nice little plastic gel holder - stick a bit of velcro to each side of your flash
cut your gel strips to fit over the long dimension of the flash.
when you aren't using the gels, velcroed over the front, run them from one side to the other, under the flash (this may be easier to understand with a picture, i will try and find my old gels and take a pic on a 580EX)

Echo63 wrote in post #17835660
you make a good point - but my gear always goes back in the same place - gels are in order in the supplied canon wallet (600EX) first sleeve is CTO, 2nd sleeve is 1/2 and 1/4 CTO (all marked too) 3rd sleeve is CTB and 4th is the others, Urban Vapour, Plusgreen, ND, Diffusion etc.

That level of organization is certainly going to be a big time saver if you are doing a planned shoot, but when I saw the photo above, my impression was that it was an informal shot on a casual outing, the kind of shot where people say "hey, take our picture together!" and you have maybe have 2-3 seconds to react or you've missed the moment entirely.

FWIW, the shot that we're all talking about here is not even one that suggests use of a gel to me. The subjects are clearly being lit by just the on-camera flash, there are no other light sources lighting them. Spill from the flash onto the grass is really the only area where you'll get a mixed lighting situation (flash-lit grass being different color from the grass lit by the Xmas lights). The Xmas lights may be incandescent bulbs, or they may be LEDs, or a mix, and they are all different colors! I don't know how you'd even go about picking a gel with any certainty of getting it right on the first go. If you can look at Christmas lights and "see" the absolute color temperature in Kelvin accurately enough to know just which gel to put on, that would be pretty impressive!

Any quantitative measure of the apparent color temperature differences of the various lights in the photo is something the photographer is only going to be able to analyze accurately back at home, by comparing color values of the foreground and background grassy areas. Then you can crudely mask the foreground and apply a hue/tint change to fix it. With quickmask and a hue/sat layer in Photoshop this is not a time-consuming fix, it's maybe a few minutes work and with a much better chance of getting closely balanced color than with a guess at the closest matching gel. If you used a gel, and the gel's not the perfect color, you'll find yourself doing this correction anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that post can replace gels, it often can't. I employ gels routinely to mix flash with ambient tungsten lighting or sunlight, but only on actual shoots where I have the time, and when I'm working with known-temperature light sources or have time for gel trial and error. If I'm out on the town with friends, I don't have any gels with me, let alone a sorted binder of them.

absplastic wrote in post #17835774
FWIW, the shot that we're all talking about here is not even one that suggests use of a gel to me. The subjects are clearly being lit by just the on-camera flash, there are no other light sources lighting them. Spill from the flash onto the grass is really the only area where you'll get a mixed lighting situation (flash-lit grass being different color from the grass lit by the Xmas lights). The Xmas lights may be incandescent bulbs, or they may be LEDs, or a mix, and they are all different colors! I don't know how you'd even go about picking a gel with any certainty of getting it right on the first go. If you can look at Christmas lights and "see" the absolute color temperature in Kelvin accurately enough to know just which gel to put on, that would be pretty impressive!

Any quantitative measure of the apparent color temperature differences of the various lights in the photo is something the photographer is only going to be able to analyze accurately back at home, by comparing color values of the foreground and background grassy areas. Then you can crudely mask the foreground and apply a hue/tint change to fix it. With quickmask and a hue/sat layer in Photoshop this is not a time-consuming fix, it's maybe a few minutes work and with a much better chance of getting closely balanced color than with a guess at the closest matching gel. If you used a gel, and the gel's not the perfect color, you'll find yourself doing this correction anyways..

I have to fundamentally agree, and to prove the point I considerably warmed the posted shot (overdid it deliberately), and one cannot see a notable difference in the overall warmth...I did not have to try to warm locally.

Heya,

There's no right or wrong way. For some things, gels are not easily replaced in post, such as when mixing strongly different ambient and flash/strobe light sources. It can be done in post, with a tremendous amount of work (plus very strong working knowledge of that post processing software). Some may find it easier to do that who are proficient in that software. Some may not. Some may find it faster to just take out a gel, put it on their flash, and be done with it. As long as the temperatures are close, it's hard to really see a stark difference in temp (as has been pointed out above).

As for it being difficult, oh come on, anyone can argue it's hard about anything in the dark. Whey even take a dSLR with interchangeable lenses and a flash and stuff out in the dark. One can easily just argue any of that could be dropped and hard to find in the dark. Hard to fiddle with the non-back-lit-buttons of the DSLR and sometimes the flash depending which model. If you can see your buttons on your camera, you can see a gel filter. And do we just leave gel filters crumpled up in a bag some where? Got to root through it like looking for a pill that fell in a purse? I'm being cheeky, no insults intended here, just jesting. But I think it makes the point. This is a chore if you make it a chore. I put my gels in a wallet. I don't carry around 15 different gels either. I take 1 or 2 gels. That's it. Why make it harder than it needs to be right? My wallet full of gels will be right where I put it. Or, if I know I'm shooting out in this kind of situation, I'm putting the gel on my flash before I even leave the house. Presto, no hunting. I tend to use a 1/4th or 1/2 CTO when I know I'm in a situation with warm lights. I can always take it off my flash if not needed, not a big deal.

Now, this isn't to convince anyone who doesn't want to fool with gels. If it doesn't work for you, great, keep doing what you're doing.
This is for someone who wants less post processing, and just wants a simple solution to using a flash around warmer temp lights with little to no processing if wanted.

Here's what I do, for anyone who cares or is interested in gels and not post-processing it:

I use velcro two sided tape on my flashes and on strips of gel filter.
I buy 24x20" gel filter sheets. They're cheap! $7. I cut them to fit the front of my strobe & speedlites.
I use a velcro wallet to hold my gels for my speedlites when I'm out. I only take one gel type/strength. Usually a 1/4th CTO. That way I don't have to choose.
I pull out the wallet, open it, take out the only gel I brought, and it velcros on.
Sometimes I just put the gel on before hand, knowing I'm using it. I can put it away if I don't need it.
If I lose it, who cares, it was a strip out of a 24x20" sheet that was $7. I lost a dime. I have and make more.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/ByZN​yt

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/AKgJ​CZ

MalVeauX wrote in post #17829335
Heya,

Yea I wouldn't shoot AV with flash. AV will attempt to exposure ambient, and ETTL flash will attempt to expose subject. You'll find inconsistent results and not really get a nice blend. Manual for flash all the way. Set camera to ambient light and depth of field needs. Set flash to subject exposure (be it fill, or key).

I would have done two things.

1) Open the shutter more. Get more ambient light for the lights, to reduce how much ISO you need. Since the flash is the exposure time, it won't matter what your shutter is for the subjects, and only wild movement will blur the lights really. If you have a lens with IS, this is even better. But this reduces need for ISO. Overall gives more options for controlling ambient light so that your flash is less obvious. You could combine the slower shutter and higher ISO to get even more ambient light, so that your blended flash at a fill setting, would look more natural even. This essentially is "dragging the shutter."

2) Gel that flash, probably with a CTO 1/4th or something if it were me. Warms it up. Helps the flash not look cold compared to the xmas lights, so the temperatures are not so different and obvious.

Very best,

This is something I always forget....with basically no light on the subject I can get away with holding out the shutter speeds longer than I normally would for subjects that might move a bit. I'll try to remember this next time and use 1/10th a second or so...whatever I can handhold in the conditions (it was quite cold and I had gloves on). Would definitely be a bit nice for a bit more ambient light. Thanks for the advice!