I am going nuts - to flash or not ?

I have spent the better half of this week practicing setting up a studio. Its really simple of three lights and a white background .. but try as I might unless I use my flash I am getting really bad shots.

So my question is : if the whole room is dark (basement) cept for the lights (500 watt bulbs x 3) would I need to use a flash or should I still be able to produce good shots without one still ?

A pic or 2 could help illustrate the problem but I think 3x 500w bulbs are not bright enough.

Get monolights if you're serious about it. That's the only way to go!

Trying to mix continuous lights with flash is a recipe for frustration for more than one reason. I would avoid that.

Continuous lighting has been used by many people to make many great portraits. But they have their limitations. They generate uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous heat, and generally require boosting ISO and using fairly slow shutter speeds.

The Strobist method (using battery-powered flash units off-camera) can get you a decent amount of light for individual shots, at a reasonable cost. The limitations of this approach include long recycle times and limited power for groups or outdoor use.

Studio strobes have none of the above limitations. But they come with a higher price tag are not as portable.

here are 2 photos just give an idea what I am talking about ...

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Jill,

Tell us what you don't like about the first shot. To me, it looks a little underexposed with the wrong white balance. These are easy things to correct, especially with a tripod and non-moving subject.

Shooting a toddler, handheld, is a different story altogether. That's when you'll need flash to keep your shutter speed up.

thank you for replying everyone. I am hoping to utilize the equipment I have just bought instead of investing more, and this set up was what I was told would work in the shop .. be it right or wrong I need to make this work first before I discard it .. right or wrong I am stuck with this at the mo.

I was using a tripod and the background I was using was white, which I hoped the photo background would be white also .. something I am not getting unless I use the flash.

The photo which is darker I tried to use a custom white balance .. although even using auto white balance with my camera I am getting the same results. Not 100% sure what you mean by underexposed.

My settings were on the dark photo ie the one I didnt use flash were : AP mode, TV shutter speed : 1/125, AV 8.0, Exposure Compensation : 0, ISO speed: 100, and as I said W/B: custom.

btw I am resorting to using the stuffed animal cos hubby and my 5 year old are sick of sitting for me while I get the same results ... using various settings on my camera I hasten to add ..

so do I still use the continuos lights and a flash for toddlers / humans ?

Jill,

You are climbing a learning curve that we all climb. It can be frustrating sometimes but it does get easier.

First, as to the custom white balance - Double check that you followed the whole procedure completely. Shoot the white backdrop using only the lights you will use for the actual shots.

Second, as to exposure. If you fill the frame with white, the camera will expose it to gray unless you compensate somehow. Since your lights aren't moving I think manual mode will work well. Increase exposure until you just start to get the little "blinkies" on your LCD.

I had trouble believing the exposure setting you listed so I checked the EXIF in the first shot. The shutter speed was actually 1/25 which is slow enough to give you motion blur sometimes when shooting people. If you want to use the continuous lights, I suggest increasing the ISO to 400 and opening the aperture to f/4 for a single subject. You'll get better shutter speeds that way.

Now as for the flash option - Tell us what flash gear you have and we can advise from there.

Curtis N wrote in post #4221858
Jill,

You are climbing a learning curve that we all climb. It can be frustrating sometimes but it does get easier.

First, as to the custom white balance - Double check that you followed the whole procedure completely. Shoot the white backdrop using only the lights you will use for the actual shots.

Second, as to exposure. If you fill the frame with white, the camera will expose it to gray unless you compensate somehow. Since your lights aren't moving I think manual mode will work well. Increase exposure until you just start to get the little "blinkies" on your LCD.

I had trouble believing the exposure setting you listed so I checked the EXIF in the first shot. The shutter speed was actually 1/25 which is slow enough to give you motion blur sometimes when shooting people. If you want to use the continuous lights, I suggest increasing the ISO to 400 and opening the aperture to f/4 for a single subject. You'll get better shutter speeds that way.

Now as for the flash option - Tell us what flash gear you have and we can advise from there.

Frustrating is the word and I could add a few more too !

k I will do another custom w/b then see what the results are, with changing the settings.

Exposure : do I change to increase it to teh "blinkies" or set it at ISO 400 with an aperture of f/4 ?

Also re flash. This is why I am struggling. When I went to buy the equipment, as I only have the flash on the camera .. I asked what flash I would need, and was told with the 3 lights I should be able to shoot without flash... so at the moment I have only my flash on my camera as I was lead to believe that I didnt need one for "indoor/portraits" if I had enough lighting.

If you think the learning curve is frustrating with digital, you should have been an old geezer like me that had to learn on film. Imagine waiting a week to see your bad results!

I think Curtis N has this pretty well nailed - white balance and exposure.
I think you can make pictures with the lights you have. Just don't be afraid to use an ISO of 400. The picture will look fine.

What you are doing might be easier if the camera is set on manual.

If I were you, after setting the ISO, I would pick a shutter speed that I could hand hold. Back in 35mm film days that would have been 1 over the focal length of the lens. If it was a 100mm lens, you could expect to hold it for 1/100 of a second. Of course, if you are using a tripod you can fudge that quite a bit and worry mostly about subject motion. I still don't think I would go below 1/60th of a second with a living subject.

Then I would find the aperture you should use. Just pointing your camera at the subject on a white backdrop and adjusting the aperture until the little arrow under the image in the viewfinder is centered won't give you the proper exposure because there is too much white. When the meter is centered, it is telling you that whatever it is reading will be a medium tone. If the white balance is neutral, that would be a medium gray. You need to either meter off something that is a medium tone in real life, like an 18% gray card filling the whole metered area, or intentionally "overexpose" the picture. That intentional overexposure to get the right exposure is what Curtis was telling you how to do. If you want something to look white, in manual, just adjust either the ISO, aperture, or shutter speed until the thing that is white just starts to show the blinkies in LCD when it is set to the shooting information mode. I think you will have to press the "info" button twice to go the that mode from the normal mode. See page 107 (if it's like the one I just downloaded) of your instruction manual if this "info" thing is confusing. Anyhow, that blinking portion of the image will be pure white with no detail. You probably don't want to push the whole background over the edge, but a few blinkies on it will get you pretty close. Just be sure you haven't set up blinkies on your subject.

As for color balance, incandescent light is orange or yellow, depending. Flash is usually pretty close to daylight color. Doing a custom white balance off the white background using just the incandescent lights will probably get you close to making the incandescent light look like daylight, which is what you want. However, if you get that right and add your flash, the flash will then record as blue light. If you do a custom white balance using the flash, then the incandescent lights will look orange again. The bottom line is, don't mix the two kinds of light if you want the picture to look "normal."

I guess I should quit writing. I'm probably just getting you more confused.

hi jill. if i can contribute justa tad.

1) put your camera on manual mode
2) turn on the lights (if theyre still off, they were prolly on since if they were off you would have bumped into a lot of things by now)
3) with the white background, look into the camera and fill the frame with the background
4) set your exposure to show around 1 and 2/3 overexposure or even 2 stops overexposure.
5) do not touch the exposure settings anymore
6) go to custom WB and choose the picture you took as the white balance subject and set your white balance to custom
7) put down your subject on the floor
8) shoot

9) go back here and comment on the steps i provided. complete with rants if they were all wrong hehe.

You've been given a lot to digest. There's no single right way to do it.

JCurtisxx wrote in post #4222788
Exposure : do I change to increase it to teh "blinkies" or set it at ISO 400 with an aperture of f/4 ?

I would suggest starting at ISO 400 and f/4. In Manual mode, aim at your background and adjust the shutter speed until the needle is at +2 but not blinking. That's just a starting point. Take a shot, look for the blinkies and adjust from there. Based on the settings in the previous shot, I think this will give you a feasible shutter speed.

That's not the only way to get there, it's just one route. But what you should understand is that by going from ISO 100 to 400, and from f/8 to f/4, you'll be able to use a shutter speed sixteen times faster than before.

This will sink in at some point, and it's easier than learning manual flash.

yep, agreed with curtis as usual LOL. if you put your iso up and your aperture to your largest that your lens can do, it would allow more play in your shutter speed.

if you are still getting slow speeds like in the region of around 1/30 or 1/25 you can still bump that iso to 800 youre shooting a canon anyhoo.

I will get this if it kills me !

k I did the following :

then

then

and I am still getting a orange/darkish background.

I am going to post my custom white background cos I am wondering if thats where I am going wrong ? ie its not actually white when I take the photo and I am thinking this might be the case ?

What is frustrating is when I see the photo in the view finder it looks great, and the background is white, when I upload it though I get this ie second photo.

And I can play with these and make them have a white background but I really would love to get this right with my camera and not have to alter every photo on my pc so it looks right.

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Does the white balance indicator on your camera's LCD look like this?

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