Thursday, July 17, 2008

One Light, One Umbrella


Sorry for the delay in posting. I have been busy doing some weddings, and well generally slack about attending to my blog. So I will use a wedding shot as a simple example. Nothing fancy, and pretty basic for those of us with some lighting stuff under our belts.

So this is simply one SB600 in a shoot through 43 inch umbrella on the camera's left in TTL. I am right up against and slightly under the umbrella. The umbrella has a little down angle on it. Nothing hard right?

A couple of observations here. First the notorious under exposure in TTL issue happened here. I had to bring it up in post. And before you ask no the flash wasn't firing on full power. It is just something about shooting through an umbrella that CLS in TTL just doesn't like. Second. I should have feathered the light from the top. There was too much spill going over the bride at the piano. I had to clean it up in post to bring it to black. I am now thinking that I should have used my convertible umbrella and used the black cover over the top half to block the spill. Lesson learned for next time. It goes in the mental reserve. Maybe I will remember to check there next time!

On a completely different note I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Zack Arias' 5 part tutorial on high key shooting on white seamless paper. It is a great read, and really gets you thinking about how well do you control your light. I could be better. i am sloppy at times, light going everywhere. Got to control the light!

Moral of this post...Control the light.

2 comments:

Honza said...

Couldn't the underexposure have been caused by the umbrella's eating one stop of light which the TTL didn't know?

John Leonard Photography said...

In theory no. TTL measures a given preflash strength from the remote flash through the lens (TTL) so it should compensate.