ON CAMERA FLASH

[aubrey_haynes]

HOW CAN ONE GET A DECENT PICTURE USING, QFLASH (X2), CANON (540) (430)

METZ(60 CT-4). CAMERAS BEING USED ARE MAMYIA RZ67 PRO II, CANON A2E,

1N... WHEN -

A)SHOOTING LIVE PERFORMANCES (FLASH IS NEEDED TO STOP ACTION)

B)INDOORS WITH VERY HIGH CEILINGS(NO CHANCE OF BOUNCING)

C)NO TIME TO GO MANUAL (NO TIME TO ADJUST FOR DISTANCE)

D)VERY MIXED LIGHTING

E) LARGE GROUPS SMALL SPACE NO TIME (AND ZOOM LENS PRODUCING POOR

QUALITY

 

 

ANY SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!

[rick_campbell]

Aubrey,

 

My first suggestion is to buy a new keyboard. One that doesn't type in all capital letters!

 

Second, why not just set everything to manual and take flash measurements before the crowd arrives and make a little map of exposures for different locations and you'll be all set.

 

Third, why not use faster film and stop using flash entirely?

 

Fourth, use a faster, non-zoom lens.

 

Fifth, if you are shooting sports then do what the pros do, use 35mm with a very fast telephoto and a monopod. I can't think of any camera less suited to capturing fast moving dimly lit live action than an RZ67, fine though it may be for studio and landscape.

[shawngibson]

Aubrey, I recently started using a Metz 60CT2, and I found mounting it onboard and bouncing it off a wall or a ceiling was only barely acceptable as a way of getting good light. On-camera lighting seems to be only barely acceptable if it is bounced and there are no walls or anything close to your subject to cast a shadow.

 

I found a much better way to get perfectly professional lighting for cheap is to mount your flash to a cheap stand and get a 5 metre sync cord. Getting the flash off-camera is key; what I have heard others say is that you need to get the flash fairly "off-axis" (i.e., awy from the lens axis) in order to get pleasing light. However you say it, mounting the flash off-camera is easy and cheap and professional.

 

As for 'no time for manual', there's nothing to it. If you know the GN (guide number of your flash, supplied by the manufacturer and sometimes even written on the unit itself) you are at, a guesstimation of the subject distance is all you need for 'accurate-enough' exposure: use GN divided by distance to get your aperture. If you subject is 5 metres away from your FLASH, and your flash is at a guide number of 50, then 50/5=f10 (or f8-1/2 is what I would set it at).

 

The math is simple enough to do in your head in only a moment. If your flash off-camera and bouncing off a wall as well, just add the total distance the light is travelling and open up a little to account for the loss which happens due to the reflectivity/shape of the wall (a dark and dull wall open up 1-1/2 to 2 stops; and a light or shiny wall open up 1/2 to 1 stop is how I do it...). For example if you are 4 meters from the wall and you bounce the flash into it, and it then has to travel another 4 meters to reach your subject, then your total distance is 8 metres. GN50/8 metres = f6-ish + say 1 stop to account for reflection of wall = f 4-1/2 to f5.6. Unless you are using slide film, such minor over- and underexposure won't matter too, too much.

 

Of course, it would all be quite simple if you had a meter, in which case you just put the light on the stand wherever you want and take a reading from either the camera or subject (for reflective or incident metering, respectively), then set your RZ accordingly.

 

I hope this helps a little.

 

shawn

[shawngibson]

A lot of what I just wrote probably won't help you at all in this case. Jeesh. You have a very tricky lighting problem which is going to take a lot of mental gymnastics. If you have enough power, I would use as much power as possible to get the fastest sync and smallest aperture you can, in order to cut out the mixed-lighting problem, i.e., try and get it so only the flash units themselves are being recorded...so you only have one colour temperature on the film.