Cute! I highly advise getting used to metering the lights and setting the exposure when you can [i.e., in the studio]. This should take care of the inconsistent exposures.

Hi everyone!

I am new to the forum and a friend of Erin's (smile). I am nervous about taking this on, as I am new to studio work and using all of these 'things'! I just did a shoot last week outside at 3 in the afternoon, had blue skies and very bright sun. We shot in the shade and I did TTL/on-camera flash. I might use some of those. Otherwise, I will get one of my kids to pose for me.

That's all I have! I am excited to take this on.

Talk to you soon,
Jen

Welcome Jen!!!

This is hardly competition worthy, but I like to get a bit of life here, so this is my first entry:

I was playing around with my daughter Sunday, enjoying the warm sun. I had my camera + a Canon 580 Speedlite with me, and decided to to a quick comparison between a typical snapshot on auto - and a shot with a few adjustments. I was actually quite suprised by on of the differences:



The blown highlights in both her skin and the sky is expected, but look at her skin tone and eyes... The bright green grass was a quite effective reflector. It is not quite obvious in the scaled down picture above, but she is green!

The camera selected 1/60 at F8.0 in AV mode. (ISO 400)

I then changed to manual, used the good old Sunny 16 rule (here 1/200 F8 ISO 400 with a 2 stop polarizer mounted) and turned on the flash:



Even though she did not want to pose, the difference is obvious; a much more plesant image. With a kid this size, constantly moving about, there is no time for metering and manual flash exposure, so the ETTL is an appropriate choice here. The flash was fired directly forward, no diffusion of any kind.

What I like about this is the fact that it only required a few seconds of calculation and a change of camera settings, something that can be achieved by most cameras.

Regards
Michael

OKAY....We are off and running! Let's go folks we need nine more separate entries to make this happen...

OK, I dunno if this will work because the shoot is TOMORROW.

I've been asked by the City's Public Works Department to photograph their "Public Works Awareness Day" which will feature several classes of children. It's going to be an "interactive" type of event, from 9 a.m. through 11 a.m. tomorrow.

Weather is calling for bright sunshine. Not always bright sunshine, but I'm thinking that's what I'm dealing with.

I have to come up with something which the newspaper will publish.

I'll be on the fly so will use my 550 EX with my Canon 5D....ETTL -1 is what I'm thinking.