Show me your wedding, or indoor photography set up

Bill,

There are quite a few threads explaining that the lightsphere sucks and why. The best thing you can do for your photography flash-wise is work on knowing which direction to bounce your flash and why. Taking control of where the light goes and therefore where it appears to come from in the image will do wonders for your flash photography. The Lightsphere negates any control you can have over the direction of the flash's light by sending it in all directions. And because it sends light in all directions (illuminating things in that room that aren't even in the frame!), it wastes power. The bigger the room, the more the flash is going to struggle...and putting a Lightsphere on it makes it struggle even more.

(Ignoring portability) It's kind of like why a coach uses a megaphone instead of surround sound speakers during practice. He wants his voice to be sent directionally to the one he's yelling at, not everyone on the field.

thank you very much, your coach concept is very ture and makes alot of sense, well every one has been very helpfull, and i think i am going to get me a flash bracket to day and start matering that, thanks again every one.

also any one know why most of the pics i tiook at the banquet turned out so yellow.

akhoopes wrote in post #5701649
thank you very much, your coach concept is very ture and makes alot of sense, well every one has been very helpfull, and i think i am going to get me a flash bracket to day and start matering that, thanks again every one.

also any one know why most of the pics i tiook at the banquet turned out so yellow.

Because your white balance was either on AUTO or set to Daylight. Tungsten lighting (yellow stuff) is around 2900K and not ~5500K like daylight. Canons suck at automatically compensating for white balance indoors.

Here's a guess, but a likely cause nonetheless - you had your WB set to auto and you were using flash. The camera expected a significant amount of the light to come from the flash, especially when the ambient exposure was not that strong. It did not know you had a Lightsphere mounted and, although it knew you were bouncing, it had no idea of the colour of the surfaces you were bouncing off of. Because it thought flash was a significant source of light it gave you a WB that was biased towards a flash colour temperature. The truth is that by the time your Fong had spread everything round the room and it had bounced off wooden panelling and off-white walls you were not getting light at flash temperature at all.

As you shot raw, just use the colour dropper or manually correct the WB for each group of photos which are similarly discoloured.

I have very good luck with the lightsphere sometimes, and I'm no master photographer. It's not the best tool for every job, but sometimes I can get what I consider to be a good shot with it:

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form wrote in post #5701693
pcunite's photos aren't anything worth writing home about.

OK while we're being unnecessarily critical, neither are yours. Neither are mine for that matter.

akhoopes wrote in post #5701540
....... here is the link most of them turnd out quite yellow, why is that, white balance was all jacked up.....

www.jumpingthrewphoto.​com/gallery/5126095_hM​vbp#309619227_FpmpX

Not knowing exactly how the Gary Fong diffuser works, I'll take a guess that it does throw some light forward, but most of it is directed upward to bounce from a ceiling. The ceilings you had were dark wood so any bounce you may have gotten, may have picked up some of the coloration of the wood. Your IMG_7937 shows that some minimal amount of light was going forward as the near subjects seem to not have the yellowish tinge and the subjects further out start to get the yellow cast to them. This yellowing is probably the ambient lighting and maybe some of the bounced flash. As CDIfoto pointed out, the Lightsphere puts light everywhere, but not necessarily where you want it. ( I like the surroundsound/megaphon​e analogy. Good one.) To me it looks as if your church images that were at a distance from the subject simply didn't have enough flash lighting to reach out far enough and the result was warm bounced light from the ceiling mixed with ambient.

The fong lightsphere uses too much light for ISO100 in many situations; try ISO200 or ISO400. Also try manual power or flash exposure compensation.

akhoopes wrote in post #5701540
I have the gary fong lightsphere,and i used it for almost every shot in the gallery below, and either i didnt use it right, dont know how to use it, or it just sucks, lol, here are the pics i took to the wedding this past weekend, this was the first wedding i ever did, the church had no air,, 95 degrees, and high dark wood celings, there is absolutly no post proccessing done to any of these, they are right out of the camera converted from raw and resized in lightroom. nothing else other then that, some turned out ok, others were just down right horrible, i think i would have gotten better results with a flash bracket, thats why i wanted to see peoples set ups, and of coarse a little more practice in this relm of photography since i am used to portrait and model shooting. this wasnt a paid gig, it was actually my grandmother getting married at 70. good practice though. here is the link most of them turnd out quite yellow, why is that, white balance was all jacked up.....

www.jumpingthrewphoto.​com/gallery/5126095_hM​vbp#309619227_FpmpX

Mark_48 wrote in post #5701718
Not knowing exactly how the Gary Fong diffuser works, I'll take a guess that it does throw some light forward, but most of it is directed upward to bounce from a ceiling. The ceilings you had were dark wood so any bounce you may have gotten, may have picked up some of the coloration of the wood. Your IMG_7937 shows that some minimal amount of light was going forward as the near subjects seem to not have the yellowish tinge and the subjects further out start to get the yellow cast to them. This yellowing is probably the ambient lighting and maybe some of the bounced flash. As CDIfoto pointed out, the Lightsphere puts light everywhere, but not necessarily where you want it. ( I like the surroundsound/megaphon​e analogy. Good one.) To me it looks as if your church images that were at a distance from the subject simply didn't have enough flash lighting to reach out far enough and the result was warm bounced light from the ceiling mixed with ambient.

the only time i was able to use flash during the church shots was during the precesional and after, any shots of the ceromony were taken with no flash

thank you all very much for all your info and insight.

form wrote in post #5701693
For all the expensive equipment, I don't think pcunite's photos are anything worth writing home about.

Yikes! I do prefer honesty though.

Let's get some things straight here.

1. The equipment I used was required to make even these photos come out like they did. Something less would only be worse...

2. I mentioned in the thread that I thought the pictures were snapshotish except for the lighting.

3. It took all I had to make that very large wood ceiling church (that means it is not white) turn out like it did all by myself. F2.8 and three flashes my friend.

4. When I am not in control of the situation it is very difficult to create dynamic lighting without an assistant.

5. NONE of these pictures have been staged. If I can stage something it will look wonderful. I thought this thread was about out of control shooting. Your pictures my friend are staged!

all,

please dont fight, lol, my staged pictures come out much better as well and the point of this is about shooting indoors, in changing conditions with different variable, not staged, where you can take your time, or take the same shot 3 times to get it right, lets all be civil here.

if you have some input about the thread please post, keep the garbage out thanks.

For what it's worth, you can see what I do with a hot shoe flash on a Newton bracket here:

http://www.cdifoto.com​/page-arnold/

Nothing indoors was staged. The bridal portrait was staged (obviously) but it was also outside and without flash. The building was white, therefore acted like a reflector. Some of the outdoor images were staged, others candid. EXIF will tell you whether flash was used or not.

Indeed they were staged, very slightly (completely). I'm sorry, I won't try to hurt your feelings any more. I felt compelled to make a comment when you mentioned the word "spectacular" with any relationship to the photos you posted. I'm sure the meaning intended was not that they were great, but that they were noteworthy in some way.

I think that you'd be well off using a faster lens when possible, or break out larger strobes. I realize and agree that hot shoe flashes are much more convenient, but there are times when more power is needed. If I had the money I'd have a set of both. And wireless receivers for each unit.

Also, the orange cast in some of the shots, especially the one of all the hands together, tells me that tungsten balancing gels on your flashes would have helped with the color cast issue.

I understand a group called Cashman photo has bulletproof photo lighting setups pre-designed, and they pay their photographers $10/hour because no matter what they do, the lighting will make the photos look great. I want a lighting setup like that.

cdifoto wrote in post #5701676
Because your white balance was either on AUTO or set to Daylight. Tungsten lighting (yellow stuff) is around 2900K and not ~5500K like daylight. Canons suck at automatically compensating for white balance indoors.

ok so what does one have to do to avoide the yellow tome to the pics, set the white balance manually, shoot raw and fix it later, set it to anothre setting other then auto, stupid questions i know, but thats how we learn.

cdifoto wrote in post #5702082
For what it's worth, you can see what I do with a hot shoe flash on a Newton bracket here:

http://www.cdifoto.com​/page-arnold/

Nothing indoors was staged. The bridal portrait was staged (obviously) but it was also outside and without flash. The building was white, therefore acted like a reflector. Some of the outdoor images were staged, others candid. EXIF will tell you whether flash was used or not.

very nice gallery, good color as well, thanks for the share, do you like the newton bracket is it pretty easy to use, sturdy and will it hold up can you change camera positions pretty easy.

now i just have to figure out the whole white balance thing for this.