New to this!

[stephanie lyn]

ok so im still learning about photography...im far from professional, but someday i would love to be! Ive been shooting family and friends for 3 years, and still dont know everything about my camera. My parents got me a studio kit from Kaezi photography, and im going to be honest, i have no clue what i am doing. Im not trying to run a business (not until i get more experience under my belt) I just want to make my indoor portraits look professional. The kit included two 85w 5500 k daylight flourescent bulbs, with the two umbrellas. now when i set it up and take my photos you can tell the difference but you cant tell im using actual lighting for photography atleast not to me. ive tried moving the lights since thats how we did it when i worked in a studio but they werent continuous lights, mine are...i will enclose a picture to show you, please excuse them, i wasnt trying to make them look professional i was just farting around with my lighting lol!



what am i doing wrong?? is it something im not doing with the camera settings, or am i just not positioning the lights right??

[scootermcq]

Well, they are not all that powerful, and you are shooting at f11.... that requires a fair amount of light.

Take the camera off auto and use the meter in camera to find the correct exposure (easy to do with continuous lights). Turn off the on board flash, it is killing the image. Try working with an aperture around f4.5 or so and set shutter speed appropriately. The lights will have to be fairly close, due to their low power.

Play & have fun...

[stephanie lyn]

ok, so i my aperture on my camera only goes to f5 on my 40-150mm lens and on my 14-42mm it goes to f5.6. i tried playing around with the settings, and i must say my cameras manual is totally wack bc the buttons its telling me to push to do certain things dont exist on my camera. BUT im starting to understand aperture more and im still working on my metering and my shutter speed. However, my cameras auto focus has been acting up, it focus's then it goes out of focus, so then i switched to manual focus and i keep turning the ring and nothing...maybe it needs to be cleaned? This is the first time its done this to me so idk whats going on! Other than that, i moved my lights in closer and it def helped a bit, i turned my onboard flash off, and my photos seem a little blurry...but they arent coming out as brightly colored as expected...any tips?? The photo i am posting with this is what i came up with after playing around a bit..ive been reading so much stuff i have a headache lol!

[scootermcq]

Good stuff.... starting to look more like a portrait than a mug shot.

1. you are shooting at 1/30th of a second.... if you are hand holding, you will experience camera shake or motion blur from your subject moving. The lights are just not bright enough for what you want to do. You could bump your ISO from 400 to say 800 and get some more lshutter speed to work with. I am just not sure how that camera is at higher ISO, but give it a shot.
2. If you can move the lights closer and keep them out of frame, go for it. Also, if you can get some brighter CFL bulbs get them to get you more light.
3. Focus is lack of light again..... your auto system needs light to focus, and the less light you give it, the more it will hunt.

[stephanie lyn]

thank you! I actually used my tripod for the first time while shooting those pictures, bc i do shake alot. i found that my camera isnt very good with higher ISOs but maybe its just me, now im not very familiar with these types of bulbs, so what size would i need? these are 85w 5500 k...also im not using the umbrellas, is that an issue? would my external flash help if i maybe pointed it at the ceiling?

[archersdad]

Originally Posted by stephanie lyn

would my external flash help if i maybe pointed it at the ceiling?

Since you already have a speedlight, you might want to pick up an inexpensive radio trigger, such as the YN-301P . It will allow you to use your external flash with your light stands and umbrellas and will (depending on which flash you have) give you much more usable light.

[stephanie lyn]

awesome! are the radio triggers universal? or is there certain types for each type of camera? I have an olympus right now but im buying a canon here soon....so i dont want to buy one right now unless i can use it on the canon as well.

[archersdad]

The 301P mounts to the camera's hotshoe and is pretty much universal. Sony uses a weird shoe but anything else should work. The range is only about 10 meters but that is good enough to get you started.

Here is an Amazon page for the 301P:
Amazon.com: YN CTR-301 Hot Shoe Flash Light control Remote Trigger w/ PC Cable: Electronics

[stephanie lyn]

ok stupid question, im a newbie so excuse all the questions lol but how does that work? I honestly have never seen those, all the photographers i have seen have used the external flash like what i have but that was also outdoors so is the radio trigger better for studios?

[archersdad]

I radio trigger is, in most cases, better than using the flash directly on the camera. It allows for much more pleasing light as well as getting rid of the deer-in-headlights look the on-camera flash can cause. I highly recommend reading the Strobist 101 and 102 series. It does a great job of explaining the advantages of off-camera flash and covers everything from the basics to advanced techniques.