I agree. You did it exactly correct. Chimp and adjust works fine...
with a single light source. But the meter is invaluable when there's
more than one and you're trying to balance them.
Chuck Norcutt
On 9/8/2011 9:29 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
> Life is good. I functioned as a VALS tonight. That's a Voice Actuated
> Light Stand. Went pretty good. Assisted a photographer friend as we
> photographed individual and team photos of cheerleaders.
>
> Being a Canon geek, he wasn't quite so versed on manual exposures and
> stuff, so here is how it went.
>
> 5D with 70-200/2.8 zoom. Camera-to-subject distance was 10 yards.
> Attached to the camera was the T45. I held a radio triggered 580 in an
> umbrella from about four yards away and a bit to the side to provide
> some nice off-axis fill.
>
> Totally new for him was using a meter to set everything ahead of
> time--and it worked!!!
>
> Using the L-508, we metered the ambient, which gave us our background.
> We established a desired aperture of F5.6 and for most of the first
> series of photos the shutter speed was set to 1/125, later 1/60 as the
> sun dropped down lower. (we were in the shade of the stands/pressbox.
> The on-camera flash (T45) ended up being set to full-power to
> establish full-exposure. To provide off-axis fill, the 580 was set to
> 1/4 power and I adjusted flash-subject distance per the meter.
>
> It was a real pleasure to nail the exposure (although we were just a
> bit hot on the flash, but that's OK as he'll pull the exposure down a
> touch during conversion) for ambient (background) on-axis and off-axis
> fill with just the meter ahead of time. Chimping was used more for
> instruction than for exposure determination. The meter was correct.
>
> In the olden days, the above was "normal", but in this day and age of
> computerized ETTL functionality and wireless flashes, it's a lost
> skill as it is easier to chimp adjust, chimp adjust, chimp adjust...
> and still not quite understand why the nose is casting a shadow. These
> results were good stuff.
>
> BTW, glad I had the T45 battery fully charged. We did somewhere around
> 180 full-power shots and another 100 half-power shots. It slowed down
> from 2.5 seconds to 3.0 seconds, so we were into the battery a ways.
> Meanwhile we went through almost two full sets of batteries in the 580
> at half power.
>
> The beautiful part of all this (besides the photographic subject
> matter, of course), was that we had established exposure prior to the
> arrival of the first cheerleader. We had a three light-source
> configuration all set and adjusted and positioned beforehand. Also, by
> locking in everything into manual exposure mode, all images from the
> entire set can be processed identically. As the sun went down lower
> and lower (causing the background to dim), I would take an occasional
> ambiant exposure with the L-508 and let him know to adjust the shutter
> speed.
>
> AG
--
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