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torgeaux posted:The 50 1.4 takes nice, dreamy pics wide open, just never ever drop it more than two inches. I took some photos yesterday and maybe mines a dud but I am not particularly impressed with the bokeh. I have to compare to the 1.8 but seems like the 1.4 has ring-like bokeh rather than smooth as butter bok’h that I’m used to with my siggie. is it fragile as hell
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Nov 7, 2023 20:19
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echinopsis posted:I took some photos yesterday and maybe mines a dud but I am not particularly impressed with the bokeh. I have to compare to the 1.8 but seems like the 1.4 has ring-like bokeh rather than smooth as butter bok’h that I’m used to with my siggie. It has a plastic internal focus gear that is easily hosed if dropped.
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Nov 7, 2023 20:49
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echinopsis posted:I took some photos yesterday and maybe mines a dud but I am not particularly impressed with the bokeh. I have to compare to the 1.8 but seems like the 1.4 has ring-like bokeh rather than smooth as butter bok’h that I’m used to with my siggie. this is NOT a good photo, but it's that ring bokeh I am looking at which sucks   maybe it's just my lens specifically. and compared to sig135mmf/1.8 took this about a minute after the others  maybe it's unfair comparison, maybe I am expecting far too much from the 50mm f/1.4 idk the 35mm I have on the way to me (which I just checked and may arrive today  ) which I expect more from, just based on price points and most importantly .. girth
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Nov 7, 2023 20:49
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torgeaux posted:It has a plastic internal focus gear that is easily hosed if dropped. I want to refrain from loving it at least compared to the ef 50mm f/1.8 STM , it focuses nice and fast. the f/1.8 feels like there's a delay and it's bogus
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Nov 7, 2023 20:51
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echinopsis posted:this is NOT a good photo, but it's that ring bokeh I am looking at which sucks You're sort of comparing apples and oranges with the distance from the 135 to the leaves and the 50 to the tree. If you focused on a closer subject the bokeh would likely be much less distracting.
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Nov 7, 2023 21:19
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charliebravo77 posted:You're sort of comparing apples and oranges with the distance from the 135 to the leaves and the 50 to the tree. If you focused on a closer subject the bokeh would likely be much less distracting. I did wonder that. still, am I wrong in thinking that's not very nice bokeh?
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Nov 7, 2023 21:34
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echinopsis posted:I did wonder that. still, am I wrong in thinking that's not very nice bokeh? https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-50-1p4-c16/5 quote:Background Blur ('bokeh') Seems like the bokeh isn't amazing but the one flower sample photo doesn't look too bad with it stopped down a bit. Your scene is similar to the car photo so you may be getting that hard edge distant point light source issue too.
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Nov 7, 2023 22:44
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Canon 17mm ts-e used, mint, 1000€? 14 day free returns. Does it make any sense? I’d use it for my hobbyist architecture and interiors. Resale value probably won’t tank too much. Using it with L-mount, Panasonic doesn’t make own ts glass. I have the Canon 24/3,5 II and pc-Nikkor 85/2,8 too. I really don’t need the 17mm but it would be so nice to own it and try it out. Ihmemies fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 18:28
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I used the Strobist 101 guide to learn flash and also bought their recommended gear, but the flash is manual only and has no TTL. I'd really like to have TTL. I have a Godox trigger (X2Tn) that supports TTL if the flash does too. This B&H filter shows me Godox flashes that will work with Canon: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/On-Camera-Flashes/ci/647?filters=fct_brand_name%3Agodox%2Cfct_ttl-system_3981%3Acanon 1. Any recs from these? 2. Any of these NOT have a big blinking red light when they are on? 3. Would it make sense to ditch the remote trigger and get a flash that can be controlled directly by my camera (Canon R6ii)? Sure seems like it would be a heck of a lot more convenient, but I am wondering what kind of drawbacks there are, if any. 4. If I can ditch my remote trigger, then should I ditch Godox altogether? I want to be able to bring my flash anywhere for helping light my scenes properly, but also for going into manual mode/off camera at times to create more artistic effect. I also really want to be able to take pictures of my friends indoors without having terrible overhead lighting, and I am hoping TTL can let me just use the flash on top of my camera without getting that "bright flash" look blue squares fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 00:33
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Godox V1 no hesitation. The accessory kit there is a good value with all the attachments you could need. I don't know what you mean by ditching the trigger, I don't think any cameras can control off camera flash without one, especially not third party units.
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Nov 29, 2023 00:54
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Bottom Liner posted:Godox V1 no hesitation. The accessory kit there is a good value with all the attachments you could need. Oh i thought modern cameras like mine could wirelessly control flashes
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Nov 29, 2023 00:55
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blue squares posted:I want to be able to bring my flash anywhere for helping light my scenes properly, but also for going into manual mode/off camera at times to create more artistic effect. I also really want to be able to take pictures of my friends indoors without having terrible overhead lighting, and I am hoping TTL can let me just use the flash on top of my camera without getting that "bright flash" look I'm not a flash expert or anything, but in my experience you really need two flashes to do an indoor scene properly (or even a portrait with backdrop). If you just have one on your camera, the background is almost always going to be too dark and the subject too bright. A single front facing flash works great if the background is lit up too brightly, like a subject standing in front of a sunlit sky and you need to flash their face to even things out. Edit: TTL isn't going to create any effect that you can't create yourself with manual control of the camera, it just will quickly give you adequate results in situations where you might not have time to fiddle with settings to dial things in properly. But fundamentally a single flash from straight on is tough, especially if the background isn't really close to the subject. You can do some cool stuff with a strong frontal flash and manual ISO control where you can basically delete the background into blackness and isolate your subject, but I don't figure that's the kind of thing you're trying to do. litany of gulps fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 01:00
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Definitely don't need 2. You simply learn to expose for ambient correctly then add flash as fill on your subject. That can be hard if the ambient light is bad or multi-colored from various sources, but you can still make it work instead of drowning the scene with fill. You definitely don't need more than one light for backdrop classic portraits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrbix0c0_k Speaking of, do we have a flash thread? We should do our own Strobist.
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Nov 29, 2023 01:09
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I watched a video (https://youtu.be/8ayloPxXBQs?si=xvj_sSkk1mD4Y4dJ) and the guy took really well lit photos of his dog using TTL and a single on-camera flash. One of my primary use cases is just to get adequate photos of friends and family in horrible indoor lighting where right now I keep getting photos with godawful shadows on faces, when we are just hanging out. It’s to make memories when I don’t have time (or a sufficiently interested audience) to do a proper lighting setup but everyone will pose for a quick photo from my tripod. And maybe some candids/quick shots if the flash doesn’t annoy the poo poo out of everyone
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Nov 29, 2023 01:25
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Bottom Liner posted:Definitely don't need 2. You simply learn to expose for ambient correctly then add flash as fill on your subject. That can be hard if the ambient light is bad or multi-colored from various sources, but you can still make it work instead of drowning the scene with fill. He ends up with a completely blacked out background from dropping his ISO way low and uses an elaborate set of bulky man sized reflectors on both sides of the subjects. It seems a little reductive to say that you simply expose for ambient correctly. blue squares posted:I watched a video (https://youtu.be/8ayloPxXBQs?si=xvj_sSkk1mD4Y4dJ) and the guy took really well lit photos of his dog using TTL and a single on-camera flash. Or here, what would this photo look like if he didn't have a lamp right up on the back wall brightly illuminating the entire thing? I suspect it would look weird, anything you did to get the dog's face properly exposed would underexpose the wall. It's not the ETTL setting that's making the composition work. Am I completely off-base here?
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Nov 29, 2023 01:45
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I couldn’t tell you that, but in my scenario I am also in a brightly-lit area and just need a fill flash balanced against ambient, so it shouldn’t be darkening the background. I would expose for the room and the flash would just add a little bit
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Nov 29, 2023 01:52
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blue squares posted:I couldn’t tell you that, but in my scenario I am also in a brightly-lit area and just need a fill flash balanced against ambient, so it shouldn’t be darkening the background. I would expose for the room and the flash would just add a little bit Brightly-lit is a tricky concept when speaking about indoor spaces, isn't it? I have a pair of AD200's, and even on their very lowest settings they completely overwhelm the kind of lighting you will find indoors when bounced off an umbrella. You can see in the dog video that he has the flash backwards and is bouncing it off the back and corner walls to get the lighting right, but there's no real context of how far behind him the rear wall actually is. But again, the result has nothing to do with the ETTL feature.
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Nov 29, 2023 02:02
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I got a flash and umbrella n poo poo and then quickly worked out it’s way harder than I thought it would be and that I’d simply just never do a shoot where I’d need one. That’s how I solved the issue
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Nov 29, 2023 02:02
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litany of gulps posted:He ends up with a completely blacked out background from dropping his ISO way low and uses an elaborate set of bulky man sized reflectors on both sides of the subjects. It seems a little reductive to say that you simply expose for ambient correctly. You expose for ambient if you're shooting an environmental portrait and don't want it to just be dramatic flash, same as if you're shooting outside. He blacked out the backdrop because that's the kind of portrait he was doing there. Two different things. That video was to show the ways you can use a single flash for studio portraits, not environmental. Properly lighting a scene with multiple lights is significantly harder than a single light source, and not just because of exposure. Shaping the light naturally is really hard, which is why it's an entire huge part of movie production.  This is an old (and very compressed) example of single strobe + exposing for ambient. It's a little more dramatic than I would light it now, but I could have easily halfed the flash power and lowered my shutter speed to even it out, among other things I could have done better, but you get the idea.  Here's another raw shot with very even lighting using one strobe + ambient.  and a single light studio shot. You definitely do not need multiple strobes to do indoor flash portraits and especially for a beginner I think that recommendation would harm more than help Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 02:13
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Maybe I’m thinking about solving my problem in the wrong way. It sounds like it might be unrealistic to expect that I can just throw on a flash on my hot shoe with TTL and expect to effortlessly get great exposures. I read a little about the feature and it seemed like it would be something I could run and gun with and easily get shots that don’t actually look like they have a flash in them
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Nov 29, 2023 02:28
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It's just required a bit of forethought, meter your scene and set your exposure to that (or a stop or two under exposed if you want a bit of isolation) then use an auto flash set to the aperture you've selected for the scene and off you go.
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Nov 29, 2023 02:32
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blue squares posted:Maybe I’m thinking about solving my problem in the wrong way. It sounds like it might be unrealistic to expect that I can just throw on a flash on my hot shoe with TTL and expect to effortlessly get great exposures. I read a little about the feature and it seemed like it would be something I could run and gun with all of this: yes. That's exaclty what TTL is meant for and largely achieves quote:and easily get shots that don’t actually look like they have a flash in them This part less so, especially not on the hotshoe. You can bounce it to light the scene better but it's almost always going to look like you used flash because of the effect of on-axis lighting making the image flat. You have to use a lot of very precise lighting modifiers to create natural light, which obviously goes against the run and gun idea.
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Nov 29, 2023 02:33
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Bottom Liner posted:Properly lighting a scene with multiple lights is significantly harder than a single light source, and not just because of exposure. Shaping the light naturally is really hard, which is why it's an entire huge part of movie production. I'm sure that's a fair and valid statement. Again, I'm no expert. I usually only use my flashes for assembly line graduation portraits or weird poo poo like dances in terrible lighting conditions. But think about the original question from that other poster. He's got one flash and his indoor casual photos are coming out with the faces overexposed. Is a flash that does ETTL going to solve his problems? Is "simply get good" sound advice? Your examples are pretty clearly staged and carefully composed, so what actual advice would you offer for someone with a single flash trying to get good candid photos on the fly indoors? I'm genuinely curious myself. Crank the power down as low as it goes in 90% of situations? Use a certain metering mode? How do you know where to point the damned thing? I've watched a bunch of portrait photography videos and half the time the advice for one light portraits is to stick it on a 9 foot pole directly behind you with the umbrella angled down at the subject. I mean, OK.
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Nov 29, 2023 02:38
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On the other hand, I can just do this: I'm not going to haul my lighting stand and umbrella to a hangout, but I can bring this. Plop it down on a counter, the floor, etc. on a 45 degree angle, tell my friend to "Say cheese" and then snap a quick photo. The nice thing about TTL in this situation is that presumably I wouldn't have to say "oops, that was too bright, let's try again." or at least not as often I was also imagining I could use it when wandering around taking pictures at night in low light with my f4 lens to be able to keep ISO lower, and in that circumstance it would be nice to leave it on camera just to take snaps and keep moving, but maybe that's just always going to give me flat lighting no matter what my flash setting is.
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Nov 29, 2023 02:48
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litany of gulps posted:I'm sure that's a fair and valid statement. Again, I'm no expert. I usually only use my flashes for assembly line graduation portraits or weird poo poo like dances in terrible lighting conditions. But think about the original question from that other poster. He's got one flash and his indoor casual photos are coming out with the faces overexposed. Is a flash that does ETTL going to solve his problems? Is "simply get good" sound advice? Your examples are pretty clearly staged and carefully composed, so what actual advice would you offer for someone with a single flash trying to get good candid photos on the fly indoors? I'm genuinely curious myself. blue squares posted:
Unless I'm confused, OP asked for which flash to buy and mentioned a variety of shooting scenarios. They never said anything about overexposure? I recommended the godox v1 kit, and then gave practical advice on metering for the scene and filling with flash. The examples I provided were to answer your point that indoor portraits needed multiple lights. I don't know where "simply get good" came into this from my posts or Megabound's, no one said anything like that. litany of gulps posted:
The power will depend entirely on the strength of the flash unit. If I'm trying to run-and-gun with a flash in the hotshoe, I turn it angled high up to the left or right and bounce it off the ceiling/wall and shoot in manual for consistent exposures. Some of them yes, putting it at 1/64th will be enough fill to get good exposure inside even at like 800 ISO. The one I use for weddings I usually run at 1/8th, 1/100th, 800, f 2.8.  It's never going to be as good as off camera strobes, but it's more than serviceable for quick candid shots like that. quote:I've watched a bunch of portrait photography videos and half the time the advice for one light portraits is to stick it on a 9 foot pole directly behind you with the umbrella angled down at the subject. I mean, OK. Yes? If you want good one light portraits that is a simple go to setup (well not directly behind you, that'd be pretty flat, more like 30-45 degrees off camera axis). Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 02:53
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Bottom Liner posted:Unless I'm confused, OP asked for which flash to buy and mentioned a variety of shooting scenarios. They never said anything about overexposure? Yeah I mentioned faces with shadows due to overhead indoor lighting in houses
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Nov 29, 2023 02:56
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Yeah I took that as "how do I make the light better using a flash" not "my flash is way too strong and blasting faces".
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Nov 29, 2023 03:02
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If it helps, this is the kind of lighting I am dealing with a lot
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Nov 29, 2023 03:04
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I took that as "how do I make the light better using a flash" not "my flash is way too strong and blasting faces". When someone talks about "bright flash faces" they're talking about "flash blasting faces." Overexposure. That's pretty much the number one problem with using a flash for 99.9 percent of people in the world who have ever touched a camera.
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Nov 29, 2023 03:04
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"faces with shadows due to overhead indoor lighting in houses" is not "bright flash faces" Flash blasting face would have no shadows. Bounced flash straight up would, but I would not call that "overhead indoor lighting". OP never said bright flash faces and never said overexposed faces, I'm not sure where you're getting any of this from. 
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Nov 29, 2023 03:07
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Bottom Liner posted:"faces with shadows due to overhead indoor lighting in houses" is not "bright flash faces" No need to argue. In my original post I mentioned wanting to avoid bright flash look, and I can see why someone would have taken that to mean that I am currently using flash and getting that result. Which isn’t far off, as I am currently NOT using a flash because I am worried that would in fact be the result, at least with test shots until I got the flash setting right. It would be nice to skip the test shots and adjusting
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Nov 29, 2023 03:09
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I took that as "how do I make the light better using a flash" not "my flash is way too strong and blasting faces". lmao this mf said blasting faces
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Nov 29, 2023 04:02
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echinopsis posted:lmao this mf said blasting faces Every time I flash my friends indoors I blast their faces, help! I try to expose to the ambient, but
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Nov 29, 2023 04:30
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Well, today was sort of my lucky day. Found a 500EL/m kit in ”probably doesn’t work” condition for 500 bucks. Figured I’d gamble on it and ended up picking up the body + finder + A12 back + Planar 80 T*. Of course lens was stuck on there and body had locked up halfway through the shutter cycle. Someone had probably hosed around with it and made it worse at some point; I tried the simple trick of turning the little screw inside to cock the lens shutter but it wasn’t moving. At all. Lens release button was stuck pushed in as well. Googled around a bit and found a japanese (?) video showing how to disassemble it a bit further in order to be able to get the lens off and drat if it didn’t work. Followed the video and had to wiggle and push/pull some things but suddenly the lens just popped right off. Cocked the shutter on it with a coin and put it on a known working body. Turns out it works just fine, with clean shutter and aperture blades and shutter speeds that seem reasonable. Yay. The 500c/m I have had a pretty cosmetically worn back, chrome finder on a black body, and a chrome non-T 80mm. Now it’ll get the nice black T* lens, a pristine black finder, and a much nicer looking A12 back. So the chrome Planar, worn but functioning A12 back, chrome finder and 500EL/m for-parts-only body goes up for sale on the local auction site. Surely I should recoup my 500 bucks and then some? Either way I am pleased with my now all-black rig.  Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 19:37
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I got the Godox V1 as recommended and its amazing. I read the manual while the battery charged, then threw it on top of my camera and tested it out. I took one shot of me in my worst lit area. Shadows all over my face  Then I put the flash on and did literally nothing other than turn it on  Does it look like I used a flash? Yeah, but it's fine. It looks better than the first one. After this I turned down the exposure on the flash a bit and got some more natural ones, but still a bit of shadow. Definitely will take some practice, but it is so much easier than a manual flash. This last one is at -3 on the flash. It's too dark, but the key thing is that the lighting on my face is even. I can easily expose properly in the first place and if not, just brighten it up afterward  Here it is after moving two sliders in lightroom EDITED first, then ORIGINAL, with same exact lightroom settings using copy settings   now I just need to learn how to autofocus on myself when shooting on a tripod on a timer... blue squares fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 22:49
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also please no comments about my asymmetrical ears, unless you're into them
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Nov 29, 2023 22:53
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was way too busy looking at your cupboards to notice sorry
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Nov 29, 2023 23:04
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try bouncing the flash onto the ceiling bam, flashhack 101
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Nov 29, 2023 23:52
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I shoot a fair bit of dancing events with a wide-angle lens and a flash. Sometimes I use TTL, but more often I'm in full manual on the flash, at its lowest setting, and I dial back in the exposure with the ISO. I often do find myself turning down highlights fairly aggressively in post, but I don't think my pics really reek of reliance on the flash.   That said, there's definitely a lot of pointing the flash up and angled away, or even directly back (right into my loving face). Weirdly, I notice little difference between shooting at ultra-low shutter speeds to get light trails (using rear sync flash), and speeding up the shutter time to catch dancers' movements. Any time I've switched up all my settings to compensate for the speed change, I've made it worse than just going from 1/15 to 1/100 and leaving other settings alone. Maybe I'm misremembering and this was actually when I was using TTL, though.
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Nov 30, 2023 01:02
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You should join us in the music photography thread. We have everything from punk shows to K-pop tours, but not much rave and DJ type stuff https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3092090&goto=lastpost
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Nov 30, 2023 01:51
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