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[OM] Re: Wedding help!!

Subject: [OM] Re: Wedding help!!
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:31:30 -0400
Walter Tani wrote:
> Shot my first wedding yesterday (as an amateur in the crowd, not a pro).  I 
> tried to follow the pro as much as possible and not get in the way at the 
> same time, but didn't like his choice of lenses and equipment.  He used 35mm 
> SLR all day, never changed to medium format, and what looked to be rather 
> plebian lenses.  
> 
What!?  Canon questions on the Oly list.  :-)

Ummm... Since you're the rank amateur looking for help with your problem 
scenarios why do you think you should be questioning the pro's choice of 
"plebian" equipment... whatever that is?  Are you sure he was shooting 
35mm?  More likely he was shooting digital.  As to not switching to 
medium format there are several possible answers.  If he was shooting 
digital his digital gear may be giving better results in addition to 
being cheaper.  And even if he was shooting film it may have been 
perfectly adequate for whatever he was paid for.  Shooting lots of 
images with medium format film costs him a lot of money that the B&G may 
not have been willing to compensate him for.  Remember that your 
motivations and views of production costs are entirely separate from his.

> I wanted some nice bokeh, so used fast lenses most of the day, but the 
> wedding was in the mid morning in a hotel courtyard, which was in deep 
> shadow, while the face of the building behind the shoot was already in 
> morning light; so difficult light. The subject was in deep shadow all the 
> time with a highlighted background.  
> 
Bokeh is nice but, for a pro, getting the picture comes first.  As you 
soon discovered, you didn't have much control of the lighting.  You have 
to use what gets you the picture.  If you get some nice bokeh so much 
the better.  Just make sure that the B&G's important family members 
don't disappear in the bokeh.  For a wedding pro f/8's a lot more common 
than wide open.  Save it for more controlled conditions.

> Questions: 
> 
> 1.  I think I should have switched to point metering under these conditions, 
> but I stayed in evaluative (over-all averaged metering) since I had a flash 
> unit on.  Mistake?
> 
Depends upon what you're trying to do.  If you're trying to take a good 
shot that has to encompass these extremes of lighting you must somehow 
reduce the brightness range between full sun and shadow.  In a digital 
world you may be able to accomplish this by shooting raw and processing 
each single image twice.  Once for highlights and once for shadows and 
them forming a composite image.  But that's an awful lot of work and 
still may not close the gap.

The best alternative (if you can) is to make two separate exposures at 
the same time... one for the bright daylight controlled by the shutter 
speed and the second with flash to brighten the shadows and controlled 
by the aperture.  As a reminder, your flash is so fast that the camera 
will capture the entire flash duration no matter what the shutter speed. 
  Therefore, the flash exposure is only controlled by the aperture and 
the power level of the flash.

Let's make an example for ISO 100 which is where you'd want to stay 
under these conditions.  High ISO is a hindrance under these conditions. 
  Under full mid-day sunlight the proper exposure would be dictated by 
the "sunny 16 rule" with the lens set to f/16 and the shutter speed to 
1/100 to match the ISO setting of 100.  Since this was mid-morning light 
let's say that is was a stop darker so that the correct sunlight 
exposure was f/11 at 1/100.  However, no matter how powerful your flash 
it's not likely to reach very far at f/11.  So what you really want to 
do is to up the shutter speed so you can open the aperture.  If you're 
shooting a Canon 20D you're fortunate in that you can go as high as 
1/250 on the flash sync speed.  Therefore you set the shutter at 1/250 
and open the aperture about 1-1/3 stops to f/7.3.

Now then, the shaded part of the courtyard is probably about 3 stops 
down (possibly more) from the sunlit part.  Your aperture and shutter 
speed are now fixed.  Your task now is to pump out enough flash power to 
the subject to make up the 3 stop difference.  And the easiest way to 
determine if it can be done is with a flash meter.  However, with 
digital, you can also simply try a few experimental shots.  If the flash 
still isn't powerful enough you can open the aperture perhaps another 
stop.  The background will be overly bright but won't likely be blown 
out and it may even look somewhat normal since people will remember the 
brightly lit courtyard.  If the exposure is off it's better that the 
sunlit area be brighter.  If you use too much flash the otherwise 
shadowed foreground will be brighter than the sunlit background and the 
picture will look fake.  Easy huh?  Not!


> 2.  I'm new to photography, just a few months into it; and VERY new to flash, 
> this is my first real outing with a flash unit, day or night.  I tried some 
> test shooting with flash around the house, and at the suggestion of a friend, 
> started with manual mode.  This didn't seem to work too well, as the exposure 
> requirements were changing so fast as they walked up the aisle of flowers... 
> the light was changing too quickly, so I changed to aperture priority so the 
> metering would be automatic.  I soon found that the lens I was using (85mm 
> f/1.2) was too fast for the flash to sync up at the lowest ISO, 100, so I had 
> to go up to around f5 and lost the dreamy bokeh I was looking for.  I shot a 
> few without flash, but upon review, these don't seem to work so well as the 
> ones with flash.  My question: when using flash in the day, do you folks 
> normally shoot in aperture priority? or manual?  This is for moving subjects 
> where you can't freeze the action.  
>
Unless you can somehow control the range of the shutter speed chosen in 
aperture priority mode you are better off to shoot manually.  Remember, 
with flash there are really two exposures.  The flash exposure will be 
controlled by the aperture and the ambient by the shutter speed.  If 
you're using flash the shutter speed, of course, must be less than or 
equal to the sync speed.  How much slower than that is determined by how 
much ambient exposure you want.  If you have plenty of light you'll want 
the ambient light to control the exposure and you'll want to use the 
flash to fill the shadows with an exposure 1-2 stops down from the 
ambient.  If there isn't much light you'll want the flash to provide the 
main exposure and you may leave the shutter open as long as possible to 
capture as much ambient background as you can.  The limit there will be 
subject movement or camera shake.


> Also, I found quickly that if I set the flash exposure compensation for 
> correct amount of flash when the subjects were far away, up the aisle, then 
> by the time they got closer to me, the flash exposure was way too high and 
> they were highlighted too much.  Argh!!  It takes several seconds to 
> manipulate the controls to get the FEC down as they move closer; but they 
> were walking pretty quick, so this was difficult and I missed a few shots.  
> How are you supposed to handle this?? FEC bracket?
> 
If you turn the camera from aperture priority to manual you'll probably 
get rid of this problem.  I say probably since the subjects can get too 
close for the control electronics to respond fast enough to control the 
flash exposure.  Stay at moderate distances from the subjects and use 
the zoom to get closer.

Flash in tight quarters is a tough business.  Remember the inverse 
square law.  A suject at 2 feet is 4 times brighter than one at 4 feet. 
  If your subject is 4 feet away and there's something in the field of 
view 2 feet away guaranteed it will be washed out.  Better you should be 
10 feet from the subject and the other object 8 feet away.  The relative 
diffenence in brightness will not be so great.

Hope this helps.  Next time watch the pro more closely.

Chuck Norcutt

> Thanks for any advice!
> 
> walt tani
> honolulu
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