Trouble shooting a white kitchen

The Ghost of FM wrote in post #8090042
Thanks for your tips and advice; it's appreciated!

You mentioned placing my flash behind the fridge. Most off shoe cables I've seen seem to be very short. Do they make longer ones or is using a "radio popper" the smarter option here?

Cheers!

You'll want some form of wireless as you won't always be able to hide the cable.

René Damkot wrote in post #8089387
CTO: Stands for Color Temperature Orange I think. Color corrects daylight to tungsten.

Cheapest option: A version of one of these:Link

Thanks for the link and product suggestion. I will try to locally source that out as the shipping from B&H is far in excess of the cost of the product!

Cheers!

In2Photos wrote in post #8090056
You'll want some form of wireless as you won't always be able to hide the cable.

I've looked at the Canon ST-E2 flash transmitter. Does this device only work with line of sight via infra red transmission or can you successfully get the signal to bounce of walls and still remotely trigger the flash?

Cheers!

The Ghost of FM wrote in post #8090015
...but would an HDR treatment of a windowless kitchen in this example be really necessary?

Well, I am coming from the perspective of living/working in New Mexico, USA, where the window views are paramount. (Not to mention that we have the most beautiful high desert views on earth!)

I have a 35 ft PC sync cable and an inexpensive radio freq remote trigger system from RPS Studio. My 580EX was modified to have a mono socket for remote PC sync triggering:

http://www.flashzebra.​com/canon580ex_footass​embly.shtml

This way, I can use a PC-monoplug cable directly from the PC sync socket on my 5D to the flash. The Flashzebra site has a bunch of cords and cables and adapters too.

THe remote triggers are:

http://www.canogacamer​a.com/detail.aspx?ID=3​5069

I did not buy them from this site, it was just the first site that I found with a pic and some info. They work well but are not the beefcake performers like radiopoppers or the Pocket WIzards.

you could probably run the cable behind the stove and fridge and it would be hidden from view. If you have the dough and you know you are going to be doing a lot of off-camera flash shooting, looking into the RP or PW systems or even the RPS Studio system ($75!) is a viable alternative. If you have two flash units that are compatible with the Canon TTL and each other, you can try using one as the master and one as the slave and firing them that way - however, they usually need a line-of-sight orientation so that the slave can "see" the pre-flash signal from the master.

Have fun!

Kirk

Sorry, here is the Lumiquest kit:

http://www.lumiquest.c​om/products/fxtra.htm

The Ghost of FM wrote in post #8090074
I've looked at the Canon ST-E2 flash transmitter. Does this device only work with line of sight via infra red transmission or can you successfully get the signal to bounce of walls and still remotely trigger the flash?

Cheers!

The ST-E2 is line of site only. I would go radio, like Cactus triggers, Radio Poppers, or Pocket Wizards, etc.

I suggest that you use manual exposure for those & adjust the flash output to match the ambient lighting. It's not as if the light were changing?
Need an exposure crutch?

Again, get away from AWB. It's particularly bad indoors & will change from room to room. Notice that the very last exposure in the 2nd group of tests was of a gray card, & it's way off.
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=54281

Optical triggers are cheap, & work well indoors. You probably don't need them to see the flash directly as the bounce off the walls should trigger them. Look at post #10:
Simple "every-day-emergency" location lighting

And the first post shows an 85B filter to bring the strobe in balance with the available light.

Falcon 2000

Canon on distortion, lighting, panos, HDR...: Effective Real Estate Photography

Photographing Bathrooms, Bedrooms (Pg 2), Hallways (Pg 3), Living Rooms (pg 4), etc.

flash for real estate photography

kirkt wrote in post #8090096
I have a 35 ft PC sync cable and an inexpensive radio freq remote trigger system from RPS Studio. My 580EX was modified to have a mono socket for remote PC sync triggering:

http://www.flashzebra.​com/canon580ex_footass​embly.shtml

This way, I can use a PC-monoplug cable directly from the PC sync socket on my 5D to the flash. The Flashzebra site has a bunch of cords and cables and adapters too.

THe remote triggers are:

http://www.canogacamer​a.com/detail.aspx?ID=3​5069

I did not buy them from this site, it was just the first site that I found with a pic and some info. They work well but are not the beefcake performers like radiopoppers or the Pocket WIzards.

you could probably run the cable behind the stove and fridge and it would be hidden from view. If you have the dough and you know you are going to be doing a lot of off-camera flash shooting, looking into the RP or PW systems or even the RPS Studio system ($75!) is a viable alternative. If you have two flash units that are compatible with the Canon TTL and each other, you can try using one as the master and one as the slave and firing them that way - however, they usually need a line-of-sight orientation so that the slave can "see" the pre-flash signal from the master.

Have fun!

Kirk

My flash appears to have a PC sync cable input on the side of it already so I'm assuming I wouldn't need the mod kit you linked to, just a long PC to PC flash cable?

I'll look into those too and thanks again for your help!

Cheers!

Regarding the use of a gray card, I think the best thing a gray card would do would be clearly demonstrate the problem Rene brought up - the different color temperatures of the different light sources. Without the flash being gelled, the gray card would give one white balance suggestion if placed near the camera where the flash is the dominant light. If you had a second gray card and placed it farther back in the kitchen where the ceiling lights are the dominant light, that gray card would give you a different suggested white balance than the closer card.

Throwing a gel on the flash is very quick and easy and won't even really slow you down.

spkerer wrote in post #8092691
Regarding the use of a gray card, I think the best thing a gray card would do would be clearly demonstrate the problem Rene brought up - the different color temperatures of the different light sources. Without the flash being gelled, the gray card would give one white balance suggestion if placed near the camera where the flash is the dominant light. If you had a second gray card and placed it farther back in the kitchen where the ceiling lights are the dominant light, that gray card would give you a different suggested white balance than the closer card.

Throwing a gel on the flash is very quick and easy and won't even really slow you down.

Yup, Rene's suggestion seems to make a lot of sense and I do plan on picking up a set of gel samples as he suggested. That and PC to PC cable to try out some off shoe flash techniques. I may have to wait a little bit though as I just purchased the 14L lens last week and need to recover from that expenditure!

Thanks again everyone for your help.

Cheers!

Good info here -- the one other recourse is to up the power of your flash and/or change your exposure so that the flash is used as the only light source and overcomes the ambient.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #8090129
I suggest that you use manual exposure for those & adjust the flash output to match the ambient lighting. It's not as if the light were changing?
Need an exposure crutch? Again, get away from AWB. It's particularly bad indoors & will change from room to room. Notice that the very last exposure in the 2nd group of tests was of a gray card, & it's way off.
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=54281 Optical triggers are cheap, & work well indoors. You probably don't need them to see the flash directly as the bounce off the walls should trigger them. Look at post #10:
Simple "every-day-emergency" location lighting

And the first post shows an 85B filter to bring the strobe in balance with the available light.

Falcon 2000

Canon on distortion, lighting, panos, HDR...: Effective Real Estate Photography

Photographing Bathrooms, Bedrooms (Pg 2), Hallways (Pg 3), Living Rooms (pg 4), etc.

flash for real estate photography

Thanks so much for posting the links and all the great info in them!

I now feel encouraged to finally shot in manual!

I actually feared doing that for the longest time but now after reading your "need an exposure crutch?" thread, I've tried it out around the house and it actually works better then the apature priority mode that I had been using for years! Amazing! I even managed to do a far more successful HDR project by properly exposing the parts of the image I wanted to be specific layers of the HDR.

Cheers!

That would work... most of the time. I've used, & sworn at, PC cords for decades & they seem to fail just when you need them the most. I still carry them, but I also use one of several (backup) optical triggers which I'll try to use first.

You & half the other people in the forum!
"M" is a tool like anything else, but it's the first one that comes out of my box. I'm glad it worked well for you.