dmacmillan wrote:
Describe to us how you take a light reading.
From your posts I suspect your meter is fine and could be a valuable tool for you. The problem is, and there's no other way to put it, you don't know how to use it. I think to use a tool like a light meter you have to have some basic principles down pat. You also have to understand what the light meter is telling you. I won't even go into talking about calibrating the entire process, from camera and light meter to you post processing setup.
I think you need to postpone accepting paid work until you get a firmer grasp on the technical aspects. Once you've done that, we can start to work on lighting technique....Show more →
You do not need to be careful of how you say things to me.. lol, just say straight out.. YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THE METER!
Yeah, well, to describe how I used it.
1. I set my lights to a medium setting.
2. I set my camera to settings I know work in that environment.
3. I set the meter to the settings on my camera.
4. I have the subject hold the meter below their chin, point it at my camera and I fire the lights.
5. I look at the meter reading and adjust my camera Fstop.
Prior to having the sekonic I would
1. Set my camera and lights to what I thought would work from experience..
2. Have my daughter or son do a test shot with the White Balance Target, black, grey, white, 24 inch....
3. Look at the histogram and the output and adjust the settings until I got the desired histogram...
4. 3. Take a photo of my son or daughter with the Manually set White Balance.
If all was good, I would do the shoot...
I have been told to setup a shoot with one light, set my light to the very lowest, do some test shots.. lean from that.. but my family life has gotten in my way of doing that..
Once I do that, I will get all this right... Hoping to do that this weekend...
I guess I have to get back to the basics.. learn how one light effects the subjects..
I will start doing that using myself as the subject.. my kids are tired of me asking them to let me take photos...
As far as getting paid... I have been doing all the work you see on my site for free. The subjects are volunteers. My site is setup to sell.. but that is up to the subjects.. if they want to come purchase anything.. not a problem.. the way to do it is in place.
My post processing has a glitch.. I have not purchased the equipment to calibrate my monitors...
I will do that when income tax comes in. I have been looking at 2 programs with hardware.. I forgot the names of them.. but I am going to get my monitors calibrated for sure.
I am going to even buy 2 new monitors.
I can get 2 24 inch monitors for about 300 bucks now! Amazing!
I never knew the photos of the baby were dark, until I saw you guys lighten them up! Amazing!
When I do the 1 light setup, test shoots with myself, I will practice using my sekonic...
I thank you all for all your advice.. I am learning from it... believe me.. I am learning from it.
ct8282 wrote:
Agree with this. Your work has improved significantly over the past few weeks but there still seems to be a lack of comprehension of the basics such as aperture, shutter, iso etc and how these are related to each other and ultimately affect the way in which a photo will turn out. Its important to understand these things to the point where they are second nature.
Your eye for composition has improved considerably and the actual images you are capturing are very good. But the basics of exposure etc are still needing lots of improvement before you will start to see consistent results from your shoots. ...Show more →
I am going to go back to the basics.. do test shoots, learn the basics again.. or should I say, re-visit what I learned and know.
Thanks a lot.. sorry if I frustrate you!
Doing all this, and running my family is a lot! I am enjoying the ride though!
ct8282 wrote:
Been a while since I used a light meter but I don't remember it ever telling me what aperture to use. I seem to remember telling the meter what my shutter speed and aperture values were and the meter would then help me to set the flash output so that it was correctly exposed at those values.
On my Sekonic L 358 I set the ISO and the Shutter speed, it gives me the F STOP.
alaskalive wrote:
You do not need to be careful of how you say things to me.. lol, just say straight out.. YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THE METER!
Yeah, well, to describe how I used it.
1. I set my lights to a medium setting.
2. I set my camera to settings I know work in that environment.
3. I set the meter to the settings on my camera.
4. I have the subject hold the meter below their chin, point it at my camera and I fire the lights.
5. I look at the meter reading and adjust my camera Fstop.
You're a good sport. Reading you procedure, I'm not sure what you mean by "I set the meter to the settings on my camera." Do you mean shutter speed and ISO?
I would suggest you change your procedure slightly. Decide up front what ISO, shutter speed and f stop you want to use. ISO and shutter speed should be pretty easy, the lowest ISO possible for your camera (eg 100), a shutter speed high enough to prevent blur without being showing the curtain shadow (1/125) and a moderate f stop of 5.6. Set your meter for the ISO and shutter speed. If you get a higher than desired f stop, then turn down your flash from the medium setting and meter again. Once you get used to it, you can do the calculation in your head (but still meter again). If you're at half power and you get a reading of f/11, then you need to set your flash at 1/8 power to get a reading of f/5.6.
Do you have Lee Varis' "Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies"? If not, buy it. In addition to a wealth of other great info, it has a procedure to help you calibrate your equipment.
It's nice to know you've got volunteers. It may be a little early to try to tackle a big group. You need to have your system dialed in so you can confidently meter across the group to check for even illumination.
dmacmillan wrote:
You're a good sport. Reading you procedure, I'm not sure what you mean by "I set the meter to the settings on my camera." Do you mean shutter speed and ISO?
I would suggest you change your procedure slightly. Decide up front what ISO, shutter speed and f stop you want to use. ISO and shutter speed should be pretty easy, the lowest ISO possible for your camera (eg 100), a shutter speed high enough to prevent blur without being showing the curtain shadow (1/125) and a moderate f stop of 5.6. Set your meter for the ISO and shutter speed. If you get a higher than desired f stop, then turn down your flash from the medium setting and meter again. Once you get used to it, you can do the calculation in your head (but still meter again). If you're at half power and you get a reading of f/11, then you need to set your flash at 1/8 power to get a reading of f/5.6.
Do you have Lee Varis' "Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies"? If not, buy it. In addition to a wealth of other great info, it has a procedure to help you calibrate your equipment.
It's nice to know you've got volunteers. It may be a little early to try to tackle a big group. You need to have your system dialed in so you can confidently meter across the group to check for even illumination....Show more →
What I meant was that I had set my camera to
200 iso
Shutter Speed to 180
Set the camera to f8
I relied upon the sekonic to tell me Fstop.
Now that you have given me a target flow.. I will work exactly as you said doing test shots on my kid...
Before my shoot today.
Groups.. no more than 3 in this little room...
Question, when shooting
1 person
3 people
4 or more
How do you set your Metering? Do you shoot canon or nikon? Please don't say HASSELBLAD!
Will try your flow and post.. in a little while!
Why iso 200 you ask? Well, I was shooting ISO 100 but thought I would try to bump it up a little.. thought it might capture darker areas brighter? Will go back to 100.
Man, I cant wait till spring so I can shoot Natural Light!
Why iso 200 you ask? Well, I was shooting ISO 100 but thought I would try to bump it up a little.. thought it might capture darker areas brighter? Will go back to 100.
Man, I cant wait till spring so I can shoot Natural Light!
This statement has confirmed that there is a slight lack of understanding of how the basic principals of Aperture, Shutter and ISO affect a pictures exposure. Whilst you are somewhat correct in your statement it doesn't necessarily fit with the usual 'studio' way of doing things.
In a controlled environment where you are using controlled light sources thinking that increasing ISO will make darker areas brighter isn't usually the right way to go about it.
In an outdoor or natural light environment you are correct by saying that bumping the ISO will make the image brighter as this is indeed the case. This is because you have no control on the amount of light there is, but you can change the cameras sensitivity to light by adjusting the ISO. However, in a controlled studio environment you should be thinking that if you need to brighten the photo (i.e increase exposure) you should increase the output of your flashes.
As explained previously, the best way is to decide what camera settings you want before the shoot. Using the lowest ISO for you camera is a pretty standard approach so lets start at ISO100. So, in manual mode on your camera, set the ISO to 100. Set the shutter to 1/160 (anything over 1/60 is usually goood for studio but if you are shooting kids keep it to at least 1/125 ), and set the aperture to f5.6 or f8.
Now, set your meter to ISO 100 and 1/160 (or whatever the camera is set to). Get your subject to hold the meter as before and fire your flashes. If the meter shows f16 for example then you need to wind the power down. If the meter shows f2.8 then you need to increase the power of your flashes. Repeat this process until your meter shows you the same f stop as your camera if set to. Once it matches then you know you have the correct flash power set to achieve the correct exposure.
This is the standard routine that I use every time I shoot with a studio setup and it was how I was taught. It has never let me down. As explained above when you have a better understanding of aperture you can do some mental calculations to help you select the flash output quicker based on the what the meter is telling you, but don't worry about this for now. Just use the trial and error method by nudging the power of your flashes up or down accordingly until the f stop shown matches what your camera is set to.
I am going to go back to the basics.. do test shoots, learn the basics again.. or should I say, re-visit what I learned and know.
Thanks a lot.. sorry if I frustrate you!
Doing all this, and running my family is a lot! I am enjoying the ride though!
And don't be silly. You do not frustrate me or anyone else for that matter. We were all in your position once and this photography game is a continual learning process. What you are doing is great. You take a bunch of photos, analyse the results, seek critique, and then go away and take a bunch more photos using what you've learned.
If you look back over your posts for the last few weeks you will see a very clear improvement in your work. This is all part of the process. I am enjoying watching how your pictures are progressing.
Get the basics sorted and I am confident your photos will suddenly start to accelerate in quality.
alaskalive wrote:
Do you shoot canon or nikon? Please don't say HASSELBLAD!
Why iso 200 you ask? Well, I was shooting ISO 100 but thought I would try to bump it up a little.. thought it might capture darker areas brighter?
Ouch
Camera brands have nothing to do with it, although shooting crop, full frame or medium format would factor in to lens/aperture decisions.
I'm afraid you don't understand ISO. It has nothing to do with dynamic range (at least in this context) or "capturing darker areas brighter". You have some serious woodshedding to do on the basics of photography.
dmacmillan wrote:
Ouch
Camera brands have nothing to do with it, although shooting crop, full frame or medium format would factor in to lens/aperture decisions.
I'm afraid you don't understand ISO. It has nothing to do with dynamic range (at least in this context) or "capturing darker areas brighter". You have some serious woodshedding to do on the basics of photography.
OOPS, my ignorance is showing..
No, the reason i said hope not a Hassleblad is because I am jealous of those who can afford one.. and the lenses! lol
Well clearly the exposure in these pics is greatly improved so that's a good start. This really is a base point now from which you need to develop. You need to getting the basic camera settings and flash settings correct each time to ensure you are getting the exposure right.
My simple advice is forget about using the light meter, and start using the histogram on your camera. I can slide the power on my studio strobes to a very close to perfect spot on the first or second try by just having practiced enough. I then check the histo, slide up or down a touch, and then fire away. I nearly always shoot at 1/160, f9-f11, ISO 100 in the studio. Easy peasey. I always shoot in RAW and if I have to make exposure adjustments in post, it might be about 1/4 stop or so.
I say this because I am trying to encourage you to not let the light meter turn you into a techno slave! I would guess that the majority of photogs that post high quality images on this site do not use a light meter.
), and set the aperture to f5.6 or f8.