Cheetahstand CL-360 and Canon 70d incompatible flash?

When doing candids, are you planning on having that flash on your body, or are you going to be lugging a stand with that flash around with you? That flash is pretty robust, along with the battery pack, and isn't quite that portable. It can be done, the battery does come with a shoulder strap, but it isn't something I would like to think about doing.

I have 430iii that i use

Here is ISO 100, 1/200th, at f8, then at f4 at 1/8 power, exactly 8' feet away... You can use the POTN histogram tool to see how it looked for exposure. I think at even f4, I would dial in a bit more flash, probably +1/3 over 1/8 power.

Nicole the good news is that you are learning to use these strobes set manually, and IMHO that's the best thing to do, by a long shot!

Your 430EX will automatically adjust it's out[put power to give what the metering feels is the correct amount of light to get you a good exposure, (no all white shots etc)

What you are doing with your manually set camera, and manual power settings of the flash is like taking control of how powerful the SUN is,.. you can be too dark or too bright,. it's all in your hands, but in your hands with some practice,. you will be able to adjust it all so that you get far better results than Canon's auto settings ever can.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18332255
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NERD!

Don't you see R2D2 off to the left? My daughter helped to construct both. It was fun!

Here are two pics I took, starting out and adjusting as I went. I could not upload the raw files. I understood what you all meant about shadows.

How I had my lights. I used the built in flash to trigger the 360 and 430.

The next step is to figure out the distance of subject from background, to help minimize shadows and/or render the background more OOF, as well as placement and power and distance of the new flash.

Nicole2320 wrote in post #18332508
How I had my lights. I used the built in flash to trigger the 360 and 430.

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Nicole,
For this sort of portrait, my default is to have the fill light. (one to camera left in your BTS picture) right next to the camera so the umbrella is above the lens.
Your first portrait without fill looks OK for main light exposure.
Your second, with fill, the fill light is about 2 or three stops too bright.

One way to practice lighting ratios, since you have two 360 lights in shoot through umbrellas, is to have the tip of each umbrella the same distance from the chair where the subject is sitting. Then put both lights to the same power. with the main light 45 degrees off camera axis and the fill right over the camera, the ratio will be 2:1 which is a good default for portraits, especially women and children.

Also, you have the 5 inch reflectors on the lights. That concentrates the light into the center of the umbrella which makes the light more harsh. The try it without a reflector to see what the difference looks like.

This is the reflector designed for use with umbrellas. It also has a fitting that screws onto the head so the center of the umbrellas is close to on axis with the flash tube.

Nicole,

A few points, at random

• Keep in mind that if there are areas of the subject illuminated with light source overlap -- for example if Fill illuminates full face seen by lens, and if Main falls only on one half of the face -- the area of overlap gets more light because light is additive in its effects.
  
• You generally want the Fill to be less intense than the Main...typically you get 'low subject lighting contrast' at 2:1 ratio of subject illumination, where the Main is as bright as the fill, and the lights overlap as just mentioned. 'High contrast' is generally about 5:1 intensity ratio of subject illumination, where the Main is 2EV brighter than the Fill.
  
• Because the second photo that you posted is overexposed, the background looks like 'white with detail'...yet ordinarily, because of the Inverse Rule of falloff of intensity of light, when you properly expose for the subject you will always have LESS exposure of the backdrop -- as long as the backdrop does not have a source of illmination of its own!
  

Some interesting videos to help with some different types of lighting techniques with 1 or 2 lights...

As I do quite a bit of portraiture with black backgrounds, the low key video was helpful for me. I need more experience with rim lighting though.

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=rDIsdTxNKJ4
https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=B2Mb6poDLvY
https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=Ba1Hiq3w3kc

Thanks for the advice, i have was 360 at the right of the camera. On the left, is the 430iii.

Ok my thinking was following that logical, I took several photos and was stepping down the 430iii

Thanks will check them out