[soccerjoe5]

Diego: I think you're asking why I said slower shutter might have provided more detail in the shirts.

I didn't mean to say that slower shutter = more detail. And I'm not even sure that I'm right in this case. I don't see a lot of texture in the shirts. Might not be the fault of the capture at all. Perhaps it just needs a little post-processing help - or perhaps it's just that she uploaded a smaller image to the forum here and I don't see the contrast but it is really there. So I'm not sure there's a problem in the photo at all, and therefore not sure my suggestion is correct. If there was a problem in the capture, perhaps it could have been dealt with by adjusting the flash output a bit.

But remember, we have only a few variables to play with here. Aperture controls the impact of the flash and depth of field; shutter speed (+ distance from the subject + flash output) affect the balance of flash and ambient light. I don't usually fiddle with ISO shooting portraits. Usually my choice with regard to aperture is also pretty constrained by depth of field considerations, and distance from subject is also usually not very negotiable. So the main questions are, do I fiddle with the flash output and/or do I leave the shutter at the max sync speed (1/180th sec) or not?

My own experience - for what little it's worth - has been that I get better results when I complement the flash with as much available light as I can, in other words, when I drag the shutter either a little or a lot. I suspect this would NOT be the case if I were shooting in a proper studio using multiple lights carefully arranged and targeted and with the help of screens etc. But I have never had this luxury. I will use two flashes for formals at a wedding if I can, but I don't usually have time to set things up as well as I'd like, bodies move in and out of the photo as we move from bride's party to groom's party etc. Even bounced, modified or deflected, flash sometimes provides hard light that creates harsh contrasts. So rather than shoot at 1/180th sec, when taking group shots like this, I often slow down to around 1/100th sec, sometimes a little slower than that. It's not a big deal, but I think it makes a difference.

Any of this make sense? Flash photography isn't a black art, exactly, but I can't imagine ever feeling entirely confident about it. The only time I get results I am really happy with is when I have time to shoot, review, adjust and reshoot. If I'm doing a portrait with a patient subject, I can do that. Most of the time - and especially with groups - I don't have that time, and I'm shooting in a way that minimizes the risk of failure rather than maximizing the change of triumph. :-)

Will

I get what you're trying to say

The photo was taken at f/9.5. That means that she's gonna need some serious dragging of the shutter to get a decent exposure or fill, depending on the ambient light.

So if you're saying the photo is a bit dark or underexposed, then (1) the lights should have been bumped up a bit, or (2) ISO bumped up a bit, or (3) aperture opened up a bit.

If you're saying the darks need some lighting, then fill light would have been needed i.e. reflector or another strobe would be much better/consistent/reliable than dragging the shutter at such small apertures at the same time avoiding motion blur

[WMBP]

Here's an example of something I was asked to do last Christmas time as a publicity photo for the sixtieth anniversary of my daughter's school. (My daughter is the Chinese girl in the middle of the photo.) The school's marketing folks had some interesting - and completely impractical - ideas. So I suggested this idea: current students, with young, less young and, um, not young at all alumni behind them, with a cake up front. The gentleman in the back of the shot was actually in the first class of the school back in 1958/59.

Anyway, I offer it here (a) because it was shot at 1/100th sec and (b) because it's a good example of the range of things that can go wrong!

First, specs:

Camera:K20D
Lens: Pentax 16-45 f/4
Focal length: 31mm
Aperture: f/11
Shutter: 1/100th sec
ISO: 400

I had two flashes with me and I remember using both of them in some of the shots but not all and I can't honestly remember what I did for this shot. I do know that I had the camera up against a wall so that I could not stand behind it; I used a Pentax cable release to shoot. The main flash (Metz 58) was bounced off the wall and ceiling behind the camera.

Now, let me list a few of the problems:

1. Some of the grown-ups in the shot were shy and would not put their faces where I could see them.
2. The two youngest children in the front were quite fidgety.
3. I had a devil of a time trying to get the children to LOOK like they were blowing without actually blowing the candles out or spitting on the cake.
4. As we shot multiple exposures the candles kept burning down - something I didn't realize until later.
5. The young lady on the right didn't want the young man behind her to get too close. I'm not kidding. Something to do with being 14 years old, I think.
6. Because I could not get everybody to squeeze together tightly as I wanted, the vignetting (applied in post) doesn't work exactly as I would have liked.
7. The reception room we were shooting in presented a whole slew of problems - almost no good background choices.

You see, most of these aren't photographic challenges - but they're a very real part of the job, in fact, the more I do this, the more I realize that crowd management - and being able to look at the scene directly and assess the composition - pretty much IS the job.

There is one quasi-photographic challenge here, which is getting people's faces in the photo. I was offered more people and turned them down because I knew managing this number was going to be hard enough. When I'm shooting a normal group portrait, I don't usually have trouble getting everybody's face in the photo. But here, the subjects were not supposed to be looking at me. They were all supposed to be looking at the children blowing out the candles. And apparently that complicated things a lot.

Why f/11? I reckon I could have gotten by with f/8. But I wanted as much depth of field as possible. As I said earlier, I was shooting to minimize risk of failure. Wanted everybody's face in focus - and wanted the cake and the young children's face's sharp.

Why 100th sec? This might not have been necessary either, in retrospect. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I just reviewed the entire shoot. I took some test shots at 1/160th sec before I started posing the whole group. They are too dark. The room did have a lot of windows but I had to close the blinds near my setup because the blinds were creating a shadow pattern. But I had ambient light coming from windows along the wall behind the camera. So I increased the EV on the flash and slowed down the shutter speed.

The school was very happy with it. Client's never wrong. :-)

As I said, it's not a black art, and it's a lot of fun. But for me, every new shoot is a new challenge and a new chance to screw up.

Will

[WMBP]

The photo was taken at f/9.5. That means that she's gonna need some serious dragging of the shutter to get a decent exposure or fill, depending on the ambient light.

So if you're saying the photo is a bit dark or underexposed, then (1) the lights should have been bumped up a bit, or (2) ISO bumped up a bit, or (3) aperture opened up a bit.

Well, I was saying that ISO and aperture may not be variables that CAN be adjusted. And for that matter, there might not have been a whole lot of extra, ambient light either.

She could also have adjusted the flash's output. One of the things I like about the Metz 58 is that it gives me a fair bit more oomph than the Pentax 540 FGZ. I use the 540 as my primary light now and the 540's as second and (sometimes) third lights.

If you're saying the darks need some lighting, then fill light would have been needed i.e. reflector or another strobe would be much better/consistent/reliable than dragging the shutter at such small apertures at the same time avoiding motion blur

I worry about motion blur, too, but it has never been a problem for me shooting group portraits like this. They're not jumping in the air, after all. And the flash seems to freeze things pretty well. I've shot groups at 1/60th sec with flash and motion blur hasn't been a problem. The problem I have with groups (aside from lighting) is people blinking in response to the pre-flash from the p-ttl system. Actually that's a problem whenever I'm shooting flash but with a group, there's an increased chance that somebody will blink.

I think your suggestion that another flash unit be thrown into the mix is probably the best idea of all. Did she tell us whether she used one flash or two or more? I can't remember. But what's best and what's practical at the moment are (for me at least) often not the same thing.

Will