Lighting settings troubles

VirtualAdept

VirtualAdept

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Mads
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I'm at my wits end here, so I'm hoping someone on this excellent forum can help.

I've got a pair of Falconeyes flash heads these that came in this kit.

The lamps are the 110's, not the 150 ones. Now, I set them up and get a nice light from them in terms of constant light. I use a Canon 30D with a 430EX flash. The camera is set to AV mode, and I use a varying range of apertures.
Now, I'm finding that either the exposure is massively too bright, or is slow and blurred, yet about right in terms of exposure.
In the time I've had them, I've only had one set of shots come out that I've looked at and actually been properly pleased with. The rest all have strange colour cast, or are just plain underexposed.
Can anyone suggest some settings to use with these lights, or would I be better off getting a decent flash gun and using wireless triggers?

Many thanks
Mads
 
Are you actually triggering the flash heads - or shooting with the modelling lamps? That would explain blur and strange colour casts (mixed lighting). How are you triggering them?
How are you metering?
 
The 430EX sets off the flash bulbs in those flashheads. I'm not using the modelling lamps only. I've tried turning the modelling lamps off, but that makes no difference to the exposure.
I've also tried using a sync cable to one of the flashheads, and I get better results, but still blurred. As for metering, I'm not entirely sure... I'm at work atm and dont have my camera to hand to check.
 
You don't have a flash meter then - that would help! Next purchase!

Maybe post some pics when you can - always easier to solve a problem you can see!
 
You say you are shooting in AV mode? If you are shooting in AV mode then the camera will set the shutter speed for you and this won't sync with the heads. Have you tried manual, setting the shutter speed to something like 1/125th? Set to F8 to start and then adjust the power of the heads (and 430) to required exposure.

AWP is right is saying that a light meter is helpful, but you should be able to make do without initially.

Sorry if I have missed something here.
 
I haven't tried full manual yet, to be completely honest I found it a little daunting since I didn't really know where to start.
 
VirtualAdept said:
The camera is set to AV mode
Click to expand...

Go to Manual, including setting the flash on camera as low as you can.

The camera's doing the TTL thing with the 430, then the FalconEyes are flooding a mass of other light in there and mucking things up.

Try ISO 100 f8 1/125s and go from there.

Remember.
Aperture affects Flash exposure
Shutter affects Ambient exposure

So only adjust Aperture for now.
 
VirtualAdept said:
I haven't tried full manual yet, to be completely honest I found it a little daunting since I didn't really know where to start.
Click to expand...

I remember when my lighting kit first arrived. All seemed very complicated. Like you I got very poor initial results, but once you've got the basic settings you'll get some pretty impressive results.

So, keep things simple. Use your 430 to trigger the FalconEyes - possibly one to start.

As said, stick the camera into manual, 1/125th, F8, ISO 100 and then experiment with the power settings on the FalconEyes.

Good luck :thumbs:
 
As everyone else says, I've also found using an 18% grey card indispensable, set everything up, place the card in front of your subject, fill the viewfinder with the card and shoot. The histogram can then tell you which way to adjust your aperture.
 
I'm guessing that you've got the 430EX in E-TTL mode, which means the pre-flash is setting off the studio heads way too early and all you're getting from them is the (orange) modelling light, plus the main flash pulse from the 430EX. Sync and exposure will be all over the place on Av.

Put the camera in manual, and set say 1/125sec at f/5.6 for starters. Put the 430EX in full manual (which disables the pre-flash) at low power, say 1/16th - you're only using it as a trigger for the studio heads. See what you get.

Check the LCD and histogram. Adjust the exposure with either f/number, ISO, or power output on the studio heads. Leave the shutter speed - it has no effect on flash exposure.

That should get you going :thumbs:
 
All of the above advice is right.
Setting the camera to manual isn't a choice, it's essential.
There's actually nothing daunting about it - in any other mode, AV for example, the meter on the camera, which doesn't know that you're using studio flash, will set the exposure to suit the light WITHOUT the studio flash, so it is bound to be wrong - in other words the exposure would have been 'right' if the studio flash wasn't there.

So relax, start again with the camera on manual and you'll soon get the hang of it. This quick tutorial in the Lencarta learning centre may help
 
Manual mode can be a daunting thought but it's actually easy and not a click and pray thing at all as I learned when I first took the plunge.

There's one thing I want to bring up which is self-evident to people who've used cameras without automatic-everything but most people who got into cameras in the DSLR age never got told about (unless they actually read the manual or played around long enough in M mode to get a decent picture).

The -2...-1...v...1...2 meter in the viewfinder that you've learned to use to set exposure compensation in P, Av and Tv modes (Canon user here!) turns into an exposure METER in Manual mode. This allows you to set your aperture (and shutter time) manually with the help of the camera's internal metering. This will of course be based purely on continuous ambient light without taking the studio flash into consideration at all.

Of course with flash, you often want to KILL ambient light and just illuminate with flash so you don't care just far off the low end of the scale you are. The further off down the better in fact, and easy to accomplish by narrowing your aperture (bigger number) and dialing up the power in the flash.

But if you want to provide fill light with flash, you use the metering to get your ambient exposure "right" and then dial enough power from the flash to illuminate the subject being shot.

I just started out with off-camera flash myself and found lots of stuff on the web but this one was pretty well written and good example photos:

http://www.thewonderoflight.com/articles/?page_id=114

Just skip the first part about on-camera automatic flash modes because you ARE going full manual ;) And I don't agree with the writer that with off-camera fill flash "The only solution for this is to use a hand held light meter, which can meter both flash and ambient light" because you can get it right by experimenting when you're learning. And it's more fun than calculating in your head ;)
 
Manual, definately and as already mentioned f8 @ 1/125th is the best starting point.
 
Right then, an update. Thank you to all you fine folk. Things were going well, I used one lamp with a softbox and my 430.
I'm fairly pleased with the pictures though I noticed some fairly obvious graining... check the exif and I'd forgotten to change the ISO to 100, so it turns out I'm a pillock :D.

I'm much happier with full manual now than I was, and the pictures I did take are consistently better than I was getting, so thank you all.

Mads
 
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