Wedding @ ISO 1600

[Freddycr]

This wedding was a real challenge; it was in Cartagena , Colombia, at night,* both spouses dressed in white, and they wanted that"cute romantic little park in the BG to show in the photo"

[Mark McCall]

Freddy,
Out of curiosity...
Why not use flash, then drag your shutter to bring up the background?

[Freddycr]

Originally Posted by Mark McCall

Freddy,
Out of curiosity...
Why not use flash, then drag your shutter to bring up the background?

If "dragging the shutter" means low exposure speed....well , it was handheld.!

If not, please explain.
Thanks for the commentrs.

Regards

[Mark McCall]

Jared,
The subjects are underexposed, possible as much as 1.5 to 2 stops. Without flash, the skin and clothes picks up the ambient, turning the white dress and tux a tan-ish color.
The concept is fantastic, without a doubt.

When you take a flash photo, your camera is actually recording two images at the same time on the same frame. Foreground/background.
Flash (or flash aperture to be exact) controls foreground, shutter speed controls background.
You can lighten or darken them independently, in camera, by using different shutter speeds and flash apertures.

Freddy,
My apologies,....sometimes I forget that not everyone has heard of dragging the shutter.
Dragging the shutter means using flash coupled with a longer shutter speed. You can use this trick either hand held or on a tripod, but depending on the amount of ambient available, you can get ghosting in your subjects without a tripod.
See my post here regarding dragging your shutter.
http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,4942.0.html

[Freddycr]

If I had increased the FEC or opened up the f/ a bit more, wouldn't I have gone OE on the clothes?

[lauriet]

I'm learning a lot from you, Mark.

[Mark McCall]

Thanks Laura

Freddy,
Not sure what FEC stands for.....let me know.

But the problem you have is that your subjects and the background have two different exposure values.
Without flash, your capturing both with the same exposure. One or the other is not going to be exposed correctly.

With flash, you can separate the two exposure values. (one on the foreground, one on the background).
In other words, you can expose the foreground with one exposure, and the background with yet another exposure....in the same frame. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, welcome to the club. It took me a year to get it hammered into my head 10 years ago.

By looking at this image, (and this is a guess), I would have used the following settings:
ISO 400, F5.6 flash aperture, F5.6 lens aperture, 30th or a 15th of a second shutter speed.

The flash would light up the subjects, and expose correctly. The 30th or 15th of a second shutter speed would allow the background to lighten up to the point where it wouldn't be overexposed.
Faster shutter speed would darken the background.
Longer shutter speed would lighten the background.
Yet the subject's exposure wouldn't change a bit. (unless they were standing directly under a light source, which it doesn't look like they are).

[Freddycr]

Thanks for that.
FEC stands for Flash Exposure Compensation. It's just increasing the power of your strobe on Canon Speedlites.
I don't remember the f/ settings, and they're not on the EXIF of that file, but I perfectly understand what you're saying (main subject & BG).
I will have to experiment more with that.
Regards

[Mark McCall]

I'm curious too.

If there is flash, it's turned way down.
In order for flash to be used as fill, there has to be some ambient availble, if that makes sense.

At a glance, there doesn't seem to be enough ambient available to use flash as a fill. The flash would need to be the main light.

[Freddycr]

Of course there was flash; a humble speedlite 420. The available light was those ghastly mercury orange street lamps..it's just that I was very weary of OE the clothes...
Here's another one from that wedding (groom & bride were that tan , I swear !!)

[Mark McCall]

Originally Posted by Freddycr

..it's just that I was very weary of OE the clothes...

Freddy,
Waaaay cool.
Too often we get carried away trying to capture the shot, but wind up overexposing whites with carelessness.
It's awesome that you are aware of OE, and working to try to prevent it.

I will tell you that the Canon 420 isn't helping you.
I was on the Canon Test Team before it was disbanded,....we couldn't get ANY of the Canon flashes to expose consistently in any mode (with the exception of full manual).
The 550EX's were the biggest culprit. We never got to test the 580EX as it was introduced after the team was cancelled. (can't remember if there was a flash between those two).
Just so I'm not misquoted....the Canon flashes would expose correctly 1/3 to 1/2 the time in TTL.* They failed with regard to consistency. One image would look great, the next one would be +1.
We checked straight ahead shooting as well as bounce flash.

The flashes would not allow you to balance foreground and background light, or if it could, Canon offered no help in getting them to do so.

I used the 550EX with great success with the EOS bodies when shooting film. There's enough latitude built into film that exact exposure wasn't necessary. Just get it in the ballpark, the lab will make you look great. But if I checked the density of the negatives, it was all over the place. If memory serves, the perfect density of Fuji NPH was 72. I'd have numbers from 60 up to 90.

The extreme larrow latitude of digital requires more precision than the Canon flashes could deliver in TTL mode.

It's been a couple of years since we tested the flashes, and some Canon bodies weren't even out yet.
I'll see if I have some notes from the session.

I love Canon, and will most likely never switch brands, but there are some severe weaknesses in some equipment.
All of their flashes scored below acceptable. But in all fairness, so did the Nikon speedlights. They did just fine when used in full manual mode. (but who uses that?), or when used with film, (because of the forgiving qualities of film).
The battery pack for the 10D's and 20D's both contained plastic gears that sheared off if overtighted with your fingers. Canon quietly issued a 2nd generation battery pack for the 20D, as they did with the 70-200 F2.8 IS lens.
The proprietary Canon flash cord has a weak hotshoe on the flash end that breaks easily. (broke one in tests....and two of my own at weddings).

[Mark McCall]

Metz.

I use two types:
Metz 45CL-4 for off-camera work. (most of the images you see me post on this site are taken with the 45CL-4).

Metz 54MZ 3 for on-camera work. Used at receptions.

Flash on auto, camera on manual.
Dial in your desired aperture, the flash delivers, regardless of how far away your subject is.
In all fairness, even the Metz will tend to overexpose if your too close to your subject,, (inside of 4-5 feet).

[Mark McCall]

Man, it's been so long since I bought either, I don't remember what they cost.

A wise photographer once told me...."what's the cost of a great image?".

Your 420 is still reliable, in manual mode.

[Mark McCall]

Jared,
If you have a choice, the 45CL-4 is best because it can be adapted to both off camera, and on camera.

The 54 isn't powerful enough, IMO to use off camera.

[dvdowns]

It only just sunk into my brain recently that flash is controlled entirely by aperture and not at all by shutter speed . I used to wonder why I could never get the background exposed at night as soon as I put the flash on . Now I use slow-sync mode on just about all my flash shots . I will have to do some tests to see if slow-sync gives exactly the same results as having the flash on aperture controlled manual mode if you know what I mean .