Wedding flash help please - doh

[leeb]

Hi all,

looking for a bit of expert advise here, got a wedding for a mate today, bad start already

i have a nikon d100 and a sb-800 flash gun on top, i can just never seem to get the exposure right, couple of questions.

wen bouncing the flash, am i right in thinking that it needs to be off a light surface, ideally over head to drop any shadows behind?

the other, is would you use the fill for shooting outside, and what are the best settings. i have read the book time and again, and all the ttl, m, etc is confusing the hell outa me.

i guess what i am looking for is someone who has used this setup or similar on a cloudy day, to point me in the right direction of settings and what works best to stop them all looking over exp when the flash is being used.

just re-read that and sounds like a right numpty, apologies, but please help

Thanks

Edited by leeb on Saturday 16th September 09:16

[Gemm]

Yes, you need a lot more thoughts into it if you want to use a flash properly. You are right about the bounce. Bounce it off the white ceiling or walls (unless you want some lovely colour cast!), and the ceiling will have to be relatively low. And yes, use the flash for outdoors. I don't know much about Nikon flash system but I guess you could just set the camera to aperture priority and use the flash, then adjust the flash compensation accordingly. I also use a diffuser (Stofen) for indoor shots.

Edited by Gemm on Saturday 16th September 09:24

[leeb]

cool, trouble ive got is i always do groups on 120 medium format outside, 60th f8 and f11, no probs. never use fill flash, never have a problem, but weddings i always use my own digital gear, and the results are no where near the same exposure with exactly the same settings. i think its just the whole wedding stress and not really understanding my gear as well as i would like to.


???

[mr noble]

For indoor flash stuff in lowish light, set the white balance on your camera to the flash setting. It really helps make things look more natural.

Outside for fill flash, you can angle the head at 45 degrees and pull out the little white plastic thingy just to throw the light forward with less power.

You could also try putting the flash on manual and setting it to a very low power setting, just to put a spot into everyones eyes and take awat the shadows under peoples eyes.


You are right though, shooting with flash is dammed tricky!!

HTH
Greg

[snapper seven]

Probably a bit late for you now but as a veteran of five years of wedding photography ( I know it's not long but it feels like it!) using Nikons (we use D200's and SB-800) our preferred set up is this...

Indoors at the home - Program mode and auto TTL flash. Always bounce off of the ceiling where possible, sb-800 can swivel for when shooting portrait. Camera is normally set on ISO200 and we only shoot RAW. White balance is set to Auto and we can adjust back at the studio if necessary, it just reduces the need to keep having to think, check and re-set white balance as you will have enough to think about on the day.

Indoors at venues - When photographing in a large room, knock the ISO up (we find we can go up to ISO 640 quite comfortably, it just helps the flash otherwise it has to pump out soo much it takes an age to recharge itself. When doing couple shots it's always good to use the white card too if bouncing off the ceiling.
If you can't bounce of the ceiling then just shoot straight but perhaps knock the flash down a little so it isn't too harsh.

Outdoors - Reduce the flash output by max 3 stops by pressing the minus button repeatedly on the SEL control thingy (what is the technical term??)
If the weather isnt great outside or there isn't much light - such as winter time in the afternoons, either knock the output down a couple of stops or just turn it off altogether, otherwise the camera will think it is dark and you will get strong foreground flash and suffer flash fall off in the background giving unbalanced lighting.

HTH too (maybe for next time)!

Dave

[leeb]

nice one people, i have now done it, and was quite happy with the results, i just put it onto the apeture conrol on the camera and kept it low for the reduced dof, and on the flash i set it to the AA setting, and it seemed to work well, over exposed the dress outside, but i just took the shots in the shade, and was lucky with cloud cover, so ended up not using it outside.

thanks tho, i will try them suggestions next time.