Pls give me some advice.

[kaunglay]

These picture were taken at my cousin wedding.
That was my first time using flash and taking indoor wedding.
I had no idea what was i doing.I had no idea how to use flash.
So all the picture come out are some dark some okay.
I'm just beginner so please teach me how to improve my skills.
Those picture were taken with olympus e450 and tumax dpt386 flash.
(shhh i'm not so rich so i use kit lens zuiko ed 14-42mm (28-84mm (35mm equivalent).
S=80-125,A=5.6-7.1, ISO=100-200 and flash in TTL mode,bounce & reflect.
As you can see all my setting are mess up.

[zona5101]

I don't know that your settings are messed up. The shot is underexposed. I suspect your flash didn't have the horsepower to get the job done when bounced. Bouncing was a good choice - you might have helped your flash out by bumping up the iso. You probably had 2 or 3 stops of iso available before you ran into prohibitively huge amounts of noise...

[Photologyst]

There is little you can do, since the wedding can’t be shot over. However, you can learn to properly use your flash and settings. Practice with your flash and without it, in a low light situation so that you are prepared for next time. Often you cannot use a flash at weddings, especially in houses of worship. Additionally, people don’t like having flash in their faces at such events. Therefore, it is a good idea to learn to adjust the camera for low light. There are many wedding tutorials on the web. This one discusses both with and without flash: The Art Of Working With On-Camera Flash at Weddings: WedPix Wedding Photography Article

In the meantime, the only way to fix this will be to do some serious PS processing. For that, underexposed is better than overexposed.



Very quickly I adjusted the 80K photo in Lightroom, Gaussian blurred the distracting background in Photoshop and ultimately cropped. You can of course do a lot more and be precise with the higher quality original. Since the couple is walking you could consider a Motion Blur instead of Gaussian for the background. I would also work on softening the faces and whitening the teeth a bit. People always want to look fairy-tale “perfect” at their wedding.

If you post high quality photos many here can help you with adjustments, if you would like that.

[scootermcq]

Originally Posted by zona5101

I don't know that your settings are messed up. The shot is underexposed. I suspect your flash didn't have the horsepower to get the job done when bounced. Bouncing was a good choice - you might have helped your flash out by bumping up the iso. You probably had 2 or 3 stops of iso available before you ran into prohibitively huge amounts of noise...

Bruce is right here. The other thing you can do is slow down the shutter speed to allow more ambient light in so the flash is not doing all the heavy lifting. For darker areas like this, try bumping up to at least ISO 400 and slow the shutter speed down. You will need to experiment with each venue to find how slow you can go and not have motion blur (flash will freeze the subject in place to a certain degree). I find most of my flash work in dark venues is 1/40 to 1/60 without any camera shake or motion blur.

[BigFuzzy]

Scott and Bruce are dead on and Photologyst is right about one thing..the thing that's needed most is simple knowledge on how to use flash.

Having said that, please please don't follow her advice about a) avoiding flash and B) her post processing suggestions.

a) flash photography is in many ways completely linked to wedding photography seeing as so many (if not the vast majority) of weddings take place indoors with anything but ideal lighting conditions. I'd wager to say that any person who looks to hire a photographer is pretty much expecting flash at their wedding. Yes, you need to know how to use the light that's available, but i can almost guarantee any photo taken indoors in poor lighting is going to seriously be needing well used flash. I've never once had either bride/groom complain about the flash, 99% they're so into the ceremony they don't even notice. I'm not sure where that advice comes from... definitely not experience shooting weddings.

b) if you want the whole world to know you're a rank amateur with no photographic skills, use that fake b/g blurring. I don't think you'll find any talented wedding photographers doing that. So don't even think it. I honestly think she made your image worse. And if you want to weigh opinions, I'd wager I've shot just a few more weddings that the person advising you.

The key is using flash so as it doesn't look like you're using flash. You just need to practice and learn what your kit can and can't do.
Good luck.

[SwissJon]

Ok.. my 2p, 2€, $2 or whatever's worth..

Big Fuzzy is right, but the advice comes too late. Everything they said is pertinant, but after the fact. Without PP, I don't see how BigFuzzy expects to rescue the photograph, so I can't really see how this advice will bring these photos into something worth framing.

We all picked a camera up for the first time once, but if we then put it down again because we aren't immediately at professional standard, then there would be very few photographers indeed. (Including, I suspect, BigFuzzy!) Photography is a learning process for sure, and sometimes we need to learn for the future, BigFuzzy's advice will help there, but more often than not, we are trying to record an event that means a lot to us and make a huge hash of it and need help rescuing things, a wedding, the birthday of a child, that we can't go back and repeat.. Not all of us go on to become wedding photographers.

I DON'T like the post processing work done by Photologyst, it's quick and sloppy. However I think, the intention is perhaps to show what could be done.. In which case you've got all the key factors there (except one) that might help rescue the picture.. They've had an attempt at getting the exposure right, they've applied a gaussian blur to the background (badly) and recropped the photo.. What surprises me is that they didn't straighten it..

I've had a lot of success with the gaussian blur, BUT you have to go VERY carefully, and when you're working on the layer above, apply the blur, invert the layer then paint it in.. What Photologyst has done is create a copy layer, cut a hole in it, and then apply the blur.. Completely back to front and so you have blur overlap the happy couple, making it look fake. If you go very carefully and do it the right way round, it's possible to apply such a blur (because the background is sufficiently distant) to make the photo look like it was taken like that.. But it will take you some time to do, possibly a couple of hours per photo if you want to make sure every hair on their head remains in focus and everything else is out..

But before you do any of this, when you have the original open.. Crop it straight (or at least so it doesn't look wonky) and then clone out the ugly brown pole that shows through the blur in the background. THEN apply the post processing, so any poor work on the cloning gets diminished, not enhanced..

Post Processing might be the sign of an amateur, but so what.. Most of us are.. It doesn't mean we should be barred from rescuing precious memories!

[BigFuzzy]

Jon, I fully agree. But in the end, he asked "I'm just beginner so please teach me how to improve my skills."
Not how to improve that single photo. I felt that the above mentioned advice didn't help him improve his skills, but were mere methods to sloppily cover up mistakes so I tried (albeit a bit harshly) to deflect from the "fix it later" mentality and focus more on the "get it right in-camera" which is why I want to focus him on simply practicing which is the point all of us made I think

Plus I never said PP in general is a sign of amateurism, please don't misquote me. I said that that specific technique, and done the way it was done, was. And as I said, I also think that that particular effort made it much worse, not that NO PP should be done. Again, please don't read into what I'm saying, but read the actual words.

EDIT: Don't mean to sound harsh, I'm not trying to fight with you.

[kaunglay]

chill guys actually yes i want all the possible solutions.
And my preference is more into "done right in-camera"
i wanna know more about how to use external flash and
get the right exposure.or rather how to control it as in how to
use it right,when to use it and how to compensate to get right.
However, i seriously do not want you all to fight over this
since we all are the same that we all start from "zero".
Anyway,, thanks you all for the suggestions and any other
suggestions are welcome still.

[BigFuzzy]

we're not fighting it's all good

The end all be all of flash (particularly out of a controlled studio environment) is Strobist read the site, take the classes do the assignments, and you'll be lighting in no time!

[SwissJon]

I'm not fighting either.. I have a lot of respect for your work BigFuzzy, you're a much better photographer than me... For the moment he he.. When I can take pictures like you, I'll try to teach you things.. Until then I'm all ears.

I didn't read the OP's comments too much when I wrote, so hands up, my bad.. I just like to try to stay positive, and I could see what Photologyst was trying to do, allbeit he spent not enough time doing it, I just felt it was a good opportunity to teach that method the right way.

And yes, you're right, I did misinterpret and misquote you.. My bad again, sorry!

And last but by no means least.. Leaning to get it right first off is what we are all trying to do.. Hats off to you to try to teach us what you know..

There.. Fences mended!