 Carol A. Tondreau |
Lighting HELP!!! I don't know if anyone is out there that can throw some advise my way, but I'll give it a try... Tonight - Saturday 2/11 - I have to shoot a daddy-daughter dance at the school. I ordered a nice studio lighting set-up but the cords for the main flashes were not the right ones and they new ones haven't come in. So so much for the studio light set up! This is what I have to work with: I am shooting with the Canon 20d and have these lens available: 18-55mm, 75-300mm and a 18-200mm. Sincerely going crazy,
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Mark Feldstein |
Greetings Carol: I'll try not to berate you here or bemoan your efforts, but it sounds like you don't need a crash course in lighting but rather one in photography. If I understand you correctly, 400 w/s in a rig with a light modifier like a 24x24 softbox, effectively cuts the rating in about half. That leaves you with about 175-200 w/s to work with as a main light. For protraits, even head shots at close range with that size box, ain't much to work with. At 100-125 ISO with your light set 8-10 feet from your subject, you'll likely be working at F2.8 or maybe...maybe F4, hence little depth of field, if any. It's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Use the smaller softbox, one fill card to the side of the subject, shoot upper torso shots, stay in close, say a hail mary and rock and roll. The second lesson here, for everyone btw, is never, ever buy ANY equipment, new or used, to shoot an assignment without having a lot of time to get familiar with it AND make sure you not only have the right parts to make it work, like sync cords, but back-ups for those things. Even if you could find a camera store that had the right adapters to make the new lights you've got work, you've never used them. For an assignment, that's a receipe for disaster. Anyway, I'd leave most of the paraphrenalia at home. Take your camera body, one lens, probably the 18-200 and tape it to the 85 or 100mm mark. It's a lighter lens that'll help you hand hold shots without strobe. Take a lot of candids. Rig your 400 in the softbox, forget the bg light. You don't need it. Shoot against the brown muslin, as I said, with a white fill card to the side.
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Carol A. Tondreau |
I actually ordered the lights with (what I thought) was PLENTY of time (a month) to play and get to know them before the dance. It was just one thing after another that wasn't working right... So... when it came down to it I was a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, I didn't get your response before I left to set up and made do with what I had. To make things a little more of a challenge (like I didn't have enough), they put me up on the stage - curtains closed - no other lights except florescent ones 75 feet up! I ended up setting my camera on a tripod, lens at about 80-100 (depending one how many people in the group). I placed my flash unit on a arm swung as far away from the camera as I could get it and angled it with the difusser. I then took the 80w/s background light and shot it into an umbrella just to the right of the camera. To the left I had a very cheapie slave flash bouncing off the white poly disk. I improvised the best I could with the knowledge I had and figured I could PhotoShop the RAW images if I needed. Here's a couple shots of what I ended up with. I know it's NOT what I had dreamed of, but overall, I can live with them. A little feedback would be great!
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Carol A. Tondreau |
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Samuel Smith |
my neck hurts.
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Carol A. Tondreau |
Okay here they are rotated...
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Carol A. Tondreau |
Okay here they are rotated...
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