Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I have three b800 alien bee lights i want to use with my new canon 7d camera. I have used them with my nikon 70d in the past with tremendous success. I do table top catalog work. I am having trouble with the proper settings, does anyone have any experience?

It should work with the exact same settings as the d70 or with slight differences. Just adjust your aperture/flash power as necessary for indoor tabletop work.

Are you looking at proper exposure settings, or other settings? Exposure settings would typically be 1/250 shutter speed, ISO 100, whatever aperture gets you the depth of field you want, then adjust the lights to match that aperture. Unfortunately, without being there with a meter, it is impossible for anyone to give you any more specific info, as there are an infinite amount of variables that will factor in.

You will want to connect one light to the camera via the cord (or use a remote), the rest can be optically slaved or triggered in the same amnner as the first. Also, some cameras will not trigger in "live view" mode, other may need a custom function set in order to do so.

I will now clearly demonstrate my ignorance. The last time I used this set up was two years ago and I am not sure what the settings were on my nikon. I cannot seem to recreate them using my canon 7d. Do you have ire commendations for mode, aperture etc.? The 7d has many more levels of controls.

I should have specified "M" mode. However, there is absolutely no way anyone can give you an accurate answer on aperture, as there are so many variables. You should make your aperture decisions on the depth of field you need. For small catalog items, f/8 should be plenty of Depth of Field, yet mitigate refraction, and therefore be a good place to start. At this point your flashes are the only variables left to consider (for quantity of light, there is more to considerfor quality of light).

Light direction will affect shadow direction. For shadowless lighting, use the lights closer to the camera, for more shadow and texture, rake the light from the side. Modifier size and proximity will affect how harsh or soft those shadows are.

Yup, as TS says, f8 should be a reasonable starting point: so you have ISO, shutter speed, and aperture fixed at those values to start. Only the levels on your ABs are variable now.

IF you have a gray card, you can shoot it in the lighting, and look at the histogram on your camera--there will be a spike that should be at or just slightly to the right of center on the graph. You can adjust the lights up or down as needed to shift it.

Check the histogram when shooting the subject, too. It is a better indication of exposure than simply looking at the image on the LCD.

Don't "trust" how the image looks on the LCD as a way to judge exposure. Since the LCD brightness is adjustable, not calibrated, you can see an image on the LCD that "looks about right" but the actual image is not correctly exposed.