Tired of flash hit and miss! (please help)

I was asked to take the formal pictures for a middle school prom. I was able to get the photos but there was A LOT of inconsistency in lighting between photos. Below is a series of photos of my wife and I that a teacher did the favor of taking. The teacher did some right after the other but some she paused in between pictures.

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I am having problems posting the image hosted on Smugmug, here is the link:
http://psaenz.smugmug.​com …YfQ4#298224937_​zivSD-A-LB

Is the 430 on camera or off? What setting are you using on the flash? ETTL? Manual?

alkaline batteries?? or NiMN rechargeables?? high ceilings?

did you adjust your FEC more than + 1/3 ??

I was having problems like that and I realized my pilot light on my 580EXII took a long time to turn "red". Silly me simply had discharged rechargeables.

Sometimes it's as simple as the flash not being mounted properly. Sometimes it's faulty equipment. Mostly it's the flash hasn't had time to recharge. Can you post exif for two photos taken in a row, one light one dark? It probably won't tell us much but it can't hurt.

As an aside doing a prom with one on camera 430 doesn't sound like a good idea. Studio lighting is what you should be using, you really need the quick recharge and high power strobes so you can use decent light modifiers.

I've seen that before. If you take a shot before the flash has time to recharge, you'll get a black frame where the flash doesn't light the scene.

Here are some of the answers to the questions:

NiMN rechargeables, ceilings a bit high but using the cap on the lightsphere, batteries were fully charged. Flash is mounted on the camera and was set to ETTL mode.

So then even if the pilot is red the flash I still have to wait a little longer? What was weird was that I would sometimes wait for around 4-5 minutes and it would still only fire around 1/2 the potential leaving a dark image, then I would quickly fire one 2 seconds after and that was full power.

Yes, I agree that the best have been to have studio lights light the scene and i think that would of helped w/ consistency and recharge time.

I just really want to stop the guess work and learn what I am doing wrong/right to be consistent w/ my equipment.

Let me look at two images and put exif info.

AlanU, yes at one point I did adjust the FEC more than +1/3 but then set it back to either 1/3 or back to "0" because I was not seeing any improvement in the consistency.

Ok here, is the EXIF information. Most of it seems like I am not waiting long enough for the flash to recycle but that one that throws me off (which is what was happening more often than none) are the photos between 15 and 16. There was only ONE second delay and I got a brighter flash output.

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Why are you using the burst drive mode of camera, and shooting the person with the same pose? Making in camera duplicates?

No flash or strobe can keep up with the machine gun mode for too long. Try single shot mode?

Going by the EXIF times your flash just couldn't keep up.

e.g. Image 2 is fine, then 3, 4 and 5 were taken within a second of image 2 and are all dark, which leads me to believe the flash couldn't recharge quick enough. Image 6 is lighter because the flash had some time to recharge (5 seconds) but still couldn''t reach full charge in time hence why it's only slightly underexposed.

All the other underexposed frames follow within a second or so of a correctly exposed image, it simply looks like the flash spent all its charge on the first frame then had nothing left for the ones after.
edit: not all, image 7 still looks dark even though it's 8 seconds after image 6, usually 8 seconds is enough for a full charge on full batteries :-/

You didn't want long enough for your flash to recharge, it takes maybe 5 seconds to do a full charge. You have to use single shot mode. Like I said you need studio units for this, even then you have to wait for them to charge, unless you're shooting on about 1/4 power.

ETTL is dodge too, it can be brilliant but if you meter say 6" off where it was before (on her arm, and not her dress)....all hell will break loose

16 shots in one minute, 25 seconds. Are you serious?

A mother came up to me after a one outfit senior session and told me how happy she was. She had originally taken her daughter to a friend's uncle to get senior pictures taken all because he had a snazzy new DSLR and talked like he knew what he was doing. He took the girl out to a park and machine gunned around 300 images. There was little to no posing whatsoever, and the mother was starting to get it. This guy probably knew allot about his gear, but he knew little of portrait photography.

She had come to me because she had to. Her daughter's school has a yearbook contract with us. So, I took the yearbook shots and then 4 more, pretty standard for a one outfit session. The mother watched me intently, and then looked at the pictures afterwards. She told me that she was amazed at how I didn't even touch my camera until I was ready to take the shot, she was floored by the fact that I posed and lit her daughter toe to head. I took the time to create the pose, and then to develop the expression. I only pushed the button when I needed to, and I only pushed the button eight times. She received eight proofs. She bought 5 out of the 8 and none from the 300 or so she had received from the gunner.

Professionalism is more than neato-frame-rates. In this business you need to create the image, not shoot until the image happens.

phsv wrote in post #5557716
Gary Fong Lightsphere.

Tupperware type devices destroy the inherent efficiency of a flash unit by throwing the light in all directions, which means that a very small percentage of it ever illuminates the scene in your viewfinder. The rest of it is mostly wasted, especially if you're under a high ceiling.

This makes your flash work a lot harder. Recycle time goes up, battery life goes down.

In the camera's viewfinder, there is little "lightning bolt" icon to indicate the flash is ready to fire. Wait for that to come on before taking a shot, and you'll get much better results.