Experiment gone RIGHT!

As a photographer, some days you just can't figure it out, and want to throw in the towel. I feel like that a lot. I don't have the top of the line Canon dSLR, or even the top of the line lenses, so I'm always in envy of the photographers that do. They've got the best camera, so that must be it, right? Funny and ironic, that I would think that, considering, I KNOW the outcome is based on the photographer and how they handle their camera. HOW they use it. They learn it, and the tricks that it can do. I should know, cause I taught myself to get comfortable in "M" mode, not "AUTO". So what was I doing wrong? I've practiced, and practiced, and wondered how younger photographers got it, and I am a few years in, and still not happy with my results.

But today, I decided to get off my rear end, while my daughter was asleep, and tackle a lesson that's literally been sitting in it's package for probably a year. I'm talking about my attachment bracket to hold my external flash. Yeah. Bought it a loooong time ago, and it stares at me, every. single. time. I'm. in. my. office. I have a Canon Speedlite 430EX II, that I attach to my hot shoe atop my camera every now and then. I really try to do the natural light when I can, but sometimes my Canon EOS 50d, just can't compete with the lighting, and the high ISO cranks out grainy, noise filled images. Not knocking the look, just not for every image. But here's the thing. I'm one of those people that either jumps in all the way, or talks myself out of it. I've talked myself out of learning my flash for a long time, and recently really needed it. But I wasn't happy with the results even with it attached to my hot shoe, so therefore, out came the tripod, the external flash attachment brace that fits the tripod, and off I went.

First, I'm going to show a picture that I took last week, in a church with very little natural light, external flash resting on the top of my camera. Even with the flash attached, I had to crank up my ISO to 1000, my shutter speed was 1/60, and aperature/fstop set to 3.5.



I had to fix the WB immediately (not shown here for demonstration purposes). There was a heavy yellow/magenta tone to the image that I felt was too heavy for what I wanted, and as you can see when I sharpened the image, it looks a bit grainy. Which I don't like. I had to run a noise reducer on the image, and these are just steps that slow me down.

So, as I sat in my small home, with small, normal sized windows (not the big ones that shine in the natural light, and give off a beautiful haze), I started moving my tripod around to different various locations to give off the best light for my images. I quickly noticed that it was too bright to have the flash facing the light source, and therefore I moved it semi away from the light source, so that it could still somewhat bounce off of it, but compliment it, by giving a more balanced exposure to the full image, and not just half of it.

Whoa, what! Look at that. I did not apply any changes to any of these images. Immediately I noticed that I was actually happy with the White Balance. I had my ISO set to 100, so I was completely happy that they didn't look grainy/noisy. I didn't have this huge external flash attached to my camera, weighing it down, causing my hand to hurt, so that was also a major plus! Oh, and not to be big headed, but I was happy with my bokeh....
So, then I moved to another room to experiment with my lighting.....

In my daughter's room, (so thankful I didn't wake her up in the process)!

Alright, LIGHTBULB moment number two went off as I took these images of my daughter... I have the "Nifty Fifty" lens that a lot of photographers have, and play with it all the time to try to find it's "Sweet Spot". Remember when I said I didn't have the top of the line lenses... Mine is the Canon 50 1.8. Would love the 1.2 or 1.4 version, but down the road I suppose!

Aperture and Shutter Speed can make or break your exposure. Here I am, thinking my sweet spot is 2.2 on my lens, and I need to have at least a SS of 100 to get a clear shot. Duh! Lighting has been my nemesis this whole time. If you notice in these shots, my ISO is 100 in each of these shots. So proud of myself, for being inside, and my ISO not being 600+....

My daughter is asleep on the bottom of a dark cargo bunk bed; one of the windows is blocked because of said bunk bed, and the other was across the room. What, what! That is where external flash on a tripod comes in. I set it up to bounce off the light source, and took a couple of images of her.

I set it at f-stop 2.0 and took the first image. But there was a shadow across her eyes. She was facing the unlit side of the bed, and I was not about to move her for a picture. So therefore, I opened the aperture to 1.8, shifted myself a little more directly by her feet. Of course it still is a wee bit darker on the right side of her head, but you can clearly see that dropping the aperture and shifting myself did make a difference in the image. :)

Then I moved into my older daughter's room. I painted her room white a few months back, and didn't ever think that the white walls would make a difference, but I LOVED the out come. Of course, I had to play with the lighting, being that 4 white walls act as a huge reflector. My previous settings were making the images blow out, but I was not about to change my ISO.

So what to do, what to do. This first image was making me crazy, till I did the two things that were going to make it all better.

Remember my light bulb moment from earlier, about the aperture? Well, here came my moment for the shutter speed.

As I studied my images, I realized that when I changed my Aperture, the exposure of my main focus in the image was changed. And when I changed my Shutter Speed, my background exposure was changed. But not wanting to go too much with either, I had to compromise both. So in the below images, you can tell that I increased my f-stop to 3.2, and SS to 200. I didn't do any vibrance/saturation changes, and I really like the SOOC image that you see. The colors remind me of the rainbow.

 I turned to the cat who was obviously curious to what I was doing, and probably wondering why I was interrupting his nap time as well. But I think he turned out handsome in his image, so that's okay. Notice, still in the white room, light bouncing everywhere, and yes, I did use my external flash. Once again, angled slightly away from light source, Even with the f-stop being increased, I felt that he was still the main focus, and the background was blurry. And I thought, "Hey, you're f-stop does not have to be 1.8, to get the effect you want!"

 

 

 



I played around with the aperture in this next image, and you can tell when I raised it to 4.5, it made the overall exposure darker. I didn't want to have to raise it in ACR, so I just changed it. But I left it as it was, so you could see the difference.

Okay, not quite sure how I got this really pretty purple/blue haze effect from this next picture. I know it was due to lighting, and I'm assuming the purple basket in the background, but don't know that I can reproduce it on a whim. I promise, there was no haze action ran on it!

 

I was in the process of lowering my aperture and it landed on 3.5; not as dark as 4.5, and not as bright as 3.2, against the white wall.

 

 

 



 And one more, back to f-stop 3.2, white wall, cute cat...

Okay, now to cat number two. I needed to take pictures of these cats for re-homing purposes, so I was going to go all out and make sure they had "portfolio" images. We rescued them from outside, because in the country, the stray dogs like to "take the cats out". We have enough animals, and blah, blah, blah. I won't bore you with that.... On to the images.  Same room as the black cat. Same bright walls, and a scared cat who finally laid down in the dog kennel, made it a little easier on me. He was in between the end of my daughter's dark cargo bed, and dark dresser, so I had to play with f-stop again to not make him so bright.

 

Please look over the following images. You can see that f-stop made a difference! I think the 2.5 was a great balance for this portrait. Anything lower, made the image too bright, and anything higher, made the image too dark.

 



Alright, I was in full play mode now, so off I went to another room. My room, which is darker than the white room, but all I had to do was set up my lighting, and move a curtain, and the lighting situation was solved. I'm not going to go in full detail with each image, but just note the aperture settings, and you can see that it made a difference in the exposure. I did bring the SS back to 100 for this room, and the reason being was that my room wasn't all white, and so I needed to allow for more light to enter my camera, without expecting my aperture to do all the work.

 

 

 

 

And here is a snapshot of how I had my lighting set up behind me from my bedroom images. As you can see, I had it bouncing of my mirror, not directly at the window. The window did have white blinds pulled down, so the sun wasn't directly streaming through the windows.

 

 

 

So, anyway, I'm going to conclude my revelations today now! I'm pretty stoked to know that having my external flash on a tripod instead of my actual camera can make my house look so bright. I have been envious of some photographers that I follow, and when they take pictures in their houses, they seem to have the sun make their home so bright. Still would love to upgrade my camera, but today, I fell back in love with my 50d, my external flash, and felt like I learned a lot!

 

I learned that I don't have to have a specific "sweet spot". As long as my aperture and shutter speed compliment each other, I can still achieve the look I want.

 

I also learned that when I get it right, SOOC, I have very little to no editing to do. Yea! That is certainly going to be a time saver!

 

Oh, and P.S. I'm shooting at my house between 2:00p and 3:00, so the sunlight isn't coming directly in through any window. I managed to play in each room, and still achieve results that I am happy with.

 

Anyway,

 

Till next time!

 

Angelica