 Michele King |
Wedding Photos underexposed I took some photos this weekend at my cousins wedding. I had my Stofen box on my flash. My photos all turned out funny. The lab told me they were underexposed. I broke the first rule by not replacing the batteries in my flash and it didn't have much time to recycle. My negatives were all very thin. Should I have taken the stofen box off while I was taking photos in the church and just used direct flash? I did replace my batteries before the reception and those photos turned out better but still pretty dark. The hall was quite dark and I still had the stofen box on. Help? What should I have done! Thanks
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Jon Close |
The Stofen and similar flash diffusers do a great job, but they need relatively nearby ceiling and walls for greatest effect. In a large hall or church where you are at greater distance from your subject (say more than about 15 ft away) the Stofen simply softens the direct flash and eats up power. The Stofen reduces the effective output of the flash by a factor of 2.5. That means that the flash must fire at higher power with the Stofen than without - which drains batteries more quickly and increases cycling time. It also means the maximum effective range of the flash is reduced by that factor. For example, if your flash has a guidenumber of 120 ft (ISO 100) and your lens is set for f/4, then without the Stofen the maximum flash range is 120÷4 = 30 ft. With the Stofen that is reduced to just 12 ft: (120÷2.5)÷4 = 12. To increase the effective range you'll need to increase the ISO. Each doubling of the ISO (eg. from 100 to 200) will increase the useable flash range by one stop (ie. a factor of 1.414x). So increasing ISO to 400 from 100 would give 2 stops greater flash range: (120 x 2 ÷ 2.5)÷4 = 24 ft.
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Jon Close |
P.S. If you aren't already using them, NiMH rechargeables will cycle the speedlight in about 1/2 the time of alkaline AAs. They are also cheaper in the long run than buying disposables.
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Michele King |
Thanks Jon, I had no idea about what you explained above. I am also using Alkaline batteries and will look into the NiMH batteries! Thanks again!
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