Flash shadow...what did I do wrong?

I had my first try at some flash portraits. 430EX on 40D with sto-fen diffuser. I couldn't find a single shady spot without speckled sun which I know is a drag but decided to have a go anyway.
ISO400 1/250 F/8 and I *think* I had the flash on 1/8 but can't remember...it's a pain that flash seetings aren't in EXIF!

Anyway..it seems the flash was too bright as I now have a shadow on the rear child...but when I dialed it down another stop on the flash it was too dark.
Any advice? Was I too close? I am wondering if this was the problem as I was only 5 feet away and using a 17-55 at 55mm. The rear child is OOF too...is this because I was too close for F/8 to get them both in focus?
Any help appreciated.

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For this particular photo, turn the camera round so the flash is on the other side. That way the flash will reach around the face of the child in front, lighting the child behind. The flash shadow will fall on the distant background, over on the right of the picture, where it will probably not show up at all. You'll still get some shadowing under the arm but no worse than you have now, and the face will be fixed.

The more complicated option is to use a large softbox or brolly to soften the light and reduce the hard edges to the shadows, but you'll still need to bring the light source left of camera to fill around the ahead of the child in front.

Hazey wrote in post #6291223
Anyway..it seems the flash was too bright as I now have a shadow on the rear child...but when I dialed it down another stop on the flash it was too dark.
Any advice? Was I too close?

You weren't too close. The flash was operating as the main light-source, it seems, rather than fill. I would normally go manual, and manual on the flash in this situation, if you want to force the flash to be as fill. Chimp, chimp, chimp and you'll get better at judging these situations. You could surely see after you'd taken this that it wasn't as you'd wanted it?

Hazey wrote in post #6291223
I am wondering if this was the problem as I was only 5 feet away and using a 17-55 at 55mm. The rear child is OOF too...is this because I was too close for F/8 to get them both in focus?
Any help appreciated.

f/8 and being quite close to them may mean that the person in the rear was OoF, yes. Try moving further away or jusing a narrower aperture.

In addition you could also use a slower shutter speed to slightly blur the background rather than larger aperture . You would use the flash to "freeze" your subject and keep them sharply in focus while still getting a nice bokeh for the background (the slower shutter speed would allow your hand "shake" to slightly blur the background).

Sando..I was using manual...both on the camera and the flash. I am still learning the how to's and where fors of how it all works.
I didn't notice the shadow on the LCD...it was stressful enough just trying to get both kids looking my way and I didn't have a great deal of time to evaluate the shots at the time which is why I am trying to work out what I did wrong now.
I think tdodd has the main solution here and looking back...I did tip the camera on it's side for this shot which put the flash on the wrong side of the raer child....I didn't think of that so thanks. If I had tipped the camera the other way then I would have lit up more of the child behind. I do hope to get a softbox going in the future but it's not within my budget at this stage.
Sando, you are right that the flash ended up more as the main light than fill...I needed to dial it down a stop it seems....and as the bishopp suggested, slow the SS down a bit more.
Thanks for the suggestions...I'll have another go at it soon.

Hazey wrote in post #6291223
I had my first try at some flash portraits. 430EX on 40D with sto-fen diffuser.

What were you thinking you were going to bounce off with the stofen? Outdoors, put that thing in your pocket.

I would have shot this manual, with proper exposure and use my on-camera flash at -2 FEC.

Gatorboy....I am not you. And I am learning. I know there is a debate about the merits of using diffusers outdoors but the lady who advised me to use it for the kids portraits has been taking outdoor portraits for many years and says that although you are wasting some of the light, the flash needs to be softened or it's too stark. I decided to use it to see for myself. The flash would have blinded these kids without it.
I WAS using manual...and I did my best at proper exposure and yes it's a little overexposed.
Your words were written in a condescending manor and did nothing but get my back up. If you can't say anything helpful or offer well meaning advise the don't post!

Hazey, you create "soft" light by making the source of the light appear larger. If you imagine a very small light source - a simple bulb, the shadows it casts are deep, with well defined edges. That is know as "hard" light. In the home, you put lampshades over your bulbs. This softens the light by blocking the direct light from the bulb and spreading the light over a wider area.

In order to make "soft" light from your flash gun you need to find a way to make the light source appear bigger. You can accomplish that several ways. One is to fire the flash into a softbox, with a large frontal surface area. Another is to fire it through an umbrella or bounce it off a brolly or reflector. The flash head itself is pretty small, so the light from it is pretty hard. When you put a Stofen Omnibounce onto the flash head it barely changes the size of the flash light at all. Any light coming directly from the Omnbounce will create shadows just as hard edged as the bare flash head.

What makes an Omnibounce work, indoors, is that it spreads all over the place and then bounces back onto yout subject from all around the room. Thus you create an enormous light source from your tiny flash. This is what makes bounced flash such a wonderful thing, and why the little popup flash is so often scorned - it can't (practically) be bounced, and is very tiny indeed, leading to extra hard shadows. Also, being right next to the lens it gives very flat lighting, concealing the contours of your subject, as there are no shadows and subtle lighting variations across the subject - everything gets hit with equal amounts of light.

Outdoors, things are different. Nature does not typically provide any surfaces for the flash to bounce off and return to your subject, other than the ground. You probably don't really want a green cast reflected up from the grass and a nice illumination under the nostrils. So, when you use the Omnibounce outdoors what do you really achieve? Pretty much nothing. You block and absorb some of the light from the flash head, and cast a load more off into the wilderness, making the flash work hard to illuminate your subject. All that does is drain batteries faster. You will not succeed in making the light softer because you will not have increased the size of your light source and the shadows ill be just as hard edged, flat and unpleasant as before.

If there is nothing to bounce off there really is nothing to be gained by using an Omnibounce, but there are some losses to be made. Save it for indoors, or perhaps near a wall or in a tunnel or archway or something (but watch for a colour cast off odd coloured surfaces). In open air it will do nothing.

Remember the 55mm lens on a 40d (cropped body) is equivalent to something like 85 or 90mm which have a rather short depth of field making them good portrait lens. Thus, at 5 feet and f/8 you probably where a bit short on DOF, you could try to focus between the 2 wonderful subjects, but then you might not have either sharp. This is always a probably with group or couple portraits.
Even with the Sto-fen your flash is still a very small light beam, soft or not, causing the shadows. I'd try to bounce it off something, maybe some white foam core or poster board, a sheet etc. You can have a VAL (strobist for voice activated lightstand - person) hold the bounce surface off to the side or even behind you. Things you might look at are a 5in1 reflector or an umbrella, these, beyond there intended purpose work great for bouncing.

Jack

I tend to find, also, that in a situation like this, focussing on the rear-most person rather than the front-most person helps get them both in focus.

when i 1st saw the pic first thing that came to my mind was you shot in manual mode. nothing wrong with that but w/o metering i also tend to over expose doing the same thing. im thinking you would of had better results shooting with the flash in ettl mode. for that shot im guessing about about 3.5-4.0 to get some background blur,, drop the flash output about a 3rd and maybe a little different position to compensate for the sun hitting the subject. the camera will do the rest of the work for you. try manual mode, shutter speed at 125-200,f stop that you think will work best( i always meter), camera flash in ettl and bingo..you will have a keeper in most cases.

i also use a diffuser when shooting outdoors to soften the light. nothing wrong with that imho.i purchased the gary fong product. the video that came with his products has alot of good information in it. he has no problems with using his diffusers on just about anything that requres light. im not buying the put the diffuser away for outdoor work one bit. my diffuser almost never leaves my flash and i get pretty good results.

i also took alot of guys advise and made up a home made diffuser for shooting and spreading light outdoors. costs about 8 bucks and works awesome. or you could buy one from b&g for about 80.00 that looks really trick and does the same thing.

Hazey wrote in post #6292130
Gatorboy....I am not you. And I am learning. I know there is a debate about the merits of using diffusers outdoors but the lady who advised me to use it for the kids portraits has been taking outdoor portraits for many years and says that although you are wasting some of the light, the flash needs to be softened or it's too stark. I decided to use it to see for myself. The flash would have blinded these kids without it.
I WAS using manual...and I did my best at proper exposure and yes it's a little overexposed.
Your words were written in a condescending manor and did nothing but get my back up. If you can't say anything helpful or offer well meaning advise the don't post!

I don't thing Gatorboy was writing in a condescending manner. He was just pointing out fact and trying to get you to think of the physics of light control.

The "tupperware" diffusers are, in my opinion, quite useless outdoors. What would work much better outdoors is a (much larger) reflective bounce card type of device.

What would also help is to get the flash off the camera and onto a bracket that keeps the flash above the lens regardless of camera position unless you are working with the camera strictly in the "landscape" position.

The "A better Bounce Card" gets my vote for this situation. The feathered version works quite well for keeping hot spots off of faces and you can make a few of different sizes to do whatever you need them to. Plus they are super cheap to make.

maybe simply shifting the baby to the right a bit more could have prevented the shadow. Have the older child lean her head forward to get the two noggins aligned with each other.

Apone wrote in post #6294579
The "A better Bounce Card" gets my vote for this situation. The feathered version works quite well for keeping hot spots off of faces and you can make a few of different sizes to do whatever you need them to. Plus they are super cheap to make.

He can make one using either a simple white index card rubber banded to the flash or he can make one using those white foam sheets at walmart in the craft section (or other craft store).

He can also use it in conjunction with his stofen style difusser. You put the "stofen" on then you rubber band the index card to the back to help direct more light forward. I've actually done this and it's not bad.

In fact here is a picture using that method (index card was bent backwards at about a 45 degree angle to reduce how much light was redirected forward and the "stofen" difusser was on to help soften the light):