Studio Lighting Nightmare!!!!!

The_Bulb

The_Bulb

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Richard
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I hired a studio for a couple of hours on Sunday to have a play around with a studio environment. This turned into an incredibly frustrating experience for me as I had said that I would shoot a friend and his family portrait for his Mum and Dad's anniversary.

I was completely honest with them and told them that I have never done this before and that if they were happy to be my guinea pigs then I was happy to spend the time taking the photos!!!!!

Well it turned into a bit of a nightmare for me as very strange things were happening with the studio lighting. I had done some research, planned how I wanted to set up the lighting but for some reason I got completely random results - and I don't mean differing here or there.

I have posted three photos below which show the sort of results I was getting with the SAME camera settings.

Details

Canon 5d Mk ii
24-70 @ focal length 70 and aperture f11
shutter speed of 1/40 sec!!!!!!!!

The lights appeared to fire as normal on each of the shots through some cheap triggers the studio provided!!!! I have no idea why this was happening and did wonder if the studio lights took a little longer to "recharge" but later on a spurted off a good couple of shots and they all came out ok so it can't be that.

All images are straight out of the camera with 1 having had a crop

Please please can anyone tell me where I went wrong???

Thanks

1.
4094627135_04b2358a14_o.jpg


2.
4095385966_b606b9aa66_o.jpg


3.
4094626877_60b695effe_o.jpg
 
A 40th second - are you sure about that? The second one looks to me to be something like 1/320th (2nd shutter curtain has started to close) and the 3rd one looks to be another problem entirely, possibly the flash firing out of sync with the shutter. Have you checked the exif data to check shutter speeds?

Possibly a bad contact, either on the hotshoe transmitter or on the flash head to which the receiver was fitted could cause the problem, especially with a cheap radio trigger.
 
H Rchard

I am no expert but 1/40th seems rather sow for flash heads, I would think 1/125th - 1/160th and around a F8. I did an introductory to Studio environment course and a deffo is a light meter did you have or use one?
 
I dont know the answer but had the thought: camera set to 2nd curtain synch plus a bit of delay on the flashes firing?
 
sbisme said:
H Rchard

I am no expert but 1/40th seems rather sow for flash heads, I would think 1/125th - 1/160th and around a F8. I did an introductory to Studio environment course and a deffo is a light meter did you have or use one?
Click to expand...

The only possible problem with 1/40th is that ambient light and light from modelling lamps may affect the result, so 1/125th is a better bet in most situations. A flash meter may be essential, but that isn't the problem here.

As the OP is sure that all the shots were taken at 1/40th I'm pretty sure that the problem lies either with the radio trigger or its connections. And, as later shots didn't have this problem then it (almost) must be the connections.
 
Shame about the stress you had.

You need about 125/160 second at F8/9 ISO100/200

Book on an intro studio course ISL in Leeds do a very good one that i would recommend and they are on this forum i think.

Mac
 
It's a sync problem for sure and since 1/40sec shouldn't make much difference (although unnecessarily long) I'm guessing it's a shutter setting problem, or a fault.

Have you got second curtain sync enabled? Not sure what effect that would have, dependant on camera used :thinking:
 
Thanks guys for all your replies - I did start at 1/125 and F8 but was trying different speeds of the camera to see if I could solve the problem I was experiencing!!!!

Maybe I need to get back in there with a different set of triggers, as if this was a fault on the camera then wouldn't the results be consistantly bad????? I did wonder if the batteries were on their way out of the triggers because sometimes they did not fire the lighting at all!!!!!

Thanks for all the advice - I am wanting to book myself on a studio course in the future!!
 
You said:

The_Bulb said:
The lights appeared to fire as normal...
Click to expand...

The_Bulb said:
Thanks guys for all your replies - I did start at 1/125 and F8 but was trying different speeds of the camera to see if I could solve the problem I was experiencing!!!!

Maybe I need to get back in there with a different set of triggers, as if this was a fault on the camera then wouldn't the results be consistantly bad????? I did wonder if the batteries were on their way out of the triggers because sometimes they did not fire the lighting at all!!!!!

Thanks for all the advice - I am wanting to book myself on a studio course in the future!!
Click to expand...

Sounds like a battery problem :thumbs:
 
HoppyUK said:
Have you got second curtain sync enabled? Not sure what effect that would have
Click to expand...

If you use second curtain sync then the flash will fire just before the second curtain starts to close. This would be fine with a flash connected to the camera by wire or with an optical trigger from a camera mounted flash but a radio transmitter will introduce a bit of a delay though so it may fire after the curtain has started to close.


Steve.
 
Steve Smith said:
If you use second curtain sync then the flash will fire just before the second curtain starts to close. This would be fine with a flash connected to the camera by wire or with an optical trigger from a camera mounted flash but a radio transmitter will introduce a bit of a delay though so it may fire after the curtain has started to close.


Steve.
Click to expand...

That was my thinking behind the blank frame as at 1/40sec with first curtain sync the camera would have caught any normal radio trigger delay. Second curtain might still have missed it.

Unless the camera is faulty (unlikely, and easily checked with another flash gun) it's gotta be a lazy trigger.
 
trigger issue, might be worth a phonecall to the studio owner

they are likely to be apologetic and to not want this to get round (as I wouldn't use the bloody place now) so you could get some money back

first is nice, and the second would be nice with a crop ;)
 
HoppyUK said:
That was my thinking behind the blank frame as at 1/40sec with first curtain sync the camera would have caught any normal radio trigger delay. Second curtain might still have missed it.
Click to expand...

Yes. If the radio is introducing a delay and second curtain sync. is used, it wouldn't matter if the shutter speed was 1/500 of a second or ten minutes, it would still be closing as the curtain closed.


Steve.
 
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