Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hello :) ... most of the shoots I do are indoors in my small white portrait studio. I use my Canon 7D set with a ISO between 100 & 200, shutter speed usually at 60 & f stop at 6.7, & usually with my Canon 2.8 17-55mm lens. I have 2 AB 800s usually one with a shoot through white umbrella & the other with the AB oct soft box. I usually just have my camera set on the flash mode.

Any advise on shooting outdoors with my lights and what would the preferred settings be compared to what I have been using indoors? I am doing a family of 14. 8 adults & 6 kids. It will be casual sitting on the the steps of a country house... trees should be shading that side of the house somewhat and the sun will be behind me, we are starting around 3PM. Then we may get some pictures under the trees right near by. Here are some of my questions... 1) I am planing on using 2 umbrellas... would it be better to bounce them rather then shoot through, 2) should I use silver umbrellas rather then the white ones I usually use? 3) How close should I have the lights to the family & how high? 4) Since I am outdoors with mixed lighting what should I have the WB set on flash or outdoors? 5) In my small studio I have the AB's set pretty low, I am guessing I will need them turned up higher for outside. My pictures have been turning out pretty nice in my studio. I have never used a light meter and I am not very tech savvy lol... I will also have my Canon 20D so I can get some natural light pictures too. Thanks all in advance! Any suggestions or ideas would be very appreciated ;)

Shelley
http://www.photographybyshelley.com

There is potential for these pictures to be great. There will be some challenges though.

First, a shoot-through umbrella sends about half of the light through and reflects half backward. In the studio it's probably bouncing back off walls etc. Outside that won't happen so you'll lose a lot of strobe efficiency with a shoot-through. A softbox would do better or a soft-silver PLM.

You'll need to decide what role you want light from the strobes to play. If you crank them up you can likely overpower the ambient in the settings you're describing. In that case you'd just set WB like you normally would.

It's more likely that you'll want to blend ambient light with the strobes. The strobes can provide fill light, in which case they'd be turned down very low. Or they can provide key light with ambient for fill. Then the strobes would need slightly more power and you might just want to use one to maintain some directionality. If you're using the strobes for fill then one of them, pretty near on-camera axis, might serve - or maybe two equally spaced to your sides and pointed straight forward or angled in symmetrically to provide an even "wall" of fill. Best might be to set strobes wide out to the sides and aim each of them at the opposite side of the group - as in, point strobe on your right toward the person farthest to your left and vice-versa. That'll allow the light to feather nicely and be pretty even.

That kind of blending will be easier to get right with a light meter but you can use the histogram to test your exposure and then adjust. You'd probably want to start with the ambient scene a bit underexposed by the camera's meter - maybe one stop under - and then bring strobe light in at a very low level and adjust upward to taste.

White balance while blending two light sources will be an issue - ideally you'd gel the strobes based on the ambient. But if they're low-powered you could just experiment. You could try daylight or shade settings, take a custom WB, or even let auto-WB take a shot at it. You may end up having to do some selective tweaking in post-processing if you don't gel the strobes. How to gel them would depend on how the ambient is looking - it'll likely be warmer than your strobe's output.

Regarding distance from subjects, bear in mind that putting the lights farther from them will make the light more even and less contrasty. So for fill more distance is likely to be better. If you're using a strobe as a key and ambient for fill then it just depends on how dramatic you'd like it to look. Lights closer to subjects will produce more contrast, have more rapid fall-off, and generally be more dramatic in effect.

As far as height, if you're using strobes for fill put them low enough to light the eye sockets. If strobes are key with ambient for fill, you'd probably want to put them higher up. Either way you'd want to expose in a manner that prevents "raccoon-eyes" - meaning your fill light will need to be sufficient to bring up those particular facial shadows.

Hope it goes great!

Thank you so much for your suggestion! It will help so much. I do have a few more questions after reading your response, if you don't mind. First of all my goal is to just make sure everyone is lit evenly... since I am dealing with 6 small kids I don't want to do anything fancy, i just want to make sure everyone is evenly lit with fill light so that i can see their eyes. so I will not put the lights too high and I like what you said about just having the lights on either side of me each pointing towards the opposite sides and farther back so that the light will not be so contrasty (correct? :) I only have one soft box & since I want the even lighting I guess I will go with umbrellas. I don't have the PLM and the shoot is tomorrow, I will have to check in to that! But since I am not looking for powerful lighting because I basically want fill do you think the umbrellas will be ok? I have 2 umbrellas that can either be shot through, lined with the black cover for bouncing white, or a silver bounce. (Ah! I accidentally posted before I finished!) as i was saying... which do you think would be best? Also since there is so many people should I go with a smaller f stop rather then the 6.7 or will that not matter so much, and 200 ISO still? I will get there early & play around. I know I will be doing some tweaking in photo shop lol, I usually do:) as far as the white balance goes. So you think I should try the shade/cloudy setting & maybe the auto wb rather then having it set on the flash setting since I am shooting more for fill correct? Thanks again... I may come up with more questions! Shelley

You should be able to get even fill light with two umbrellas to the sides, or even a single one (or your softbox) right behind you and over your head. Especially if the softbox is large.

I think white bounce or shoot-through would be good. Just recognize that with shoot-through in a small white studio, a lot of the light is actually bouncing backward and off those white surfaces and providing all kinds of fill. Outdoors that reflected light will be wasted - at the very least you may need higher power settings than usual.

You'll definitely want to use a sufficient aperture to get everyone in focus. f/11 might be the safest bet. Personally I find it easier to bring in ambient light with higher ISO's - 400 or 800 maybe. On the 7D I don't find noise to be objectionable at those levels but try it beforehand and make sure you agree.

I think your safest bet on white balance would be shooting a custom one. Let me know if you need help doing that.

Another helpful technique for you to look into is Neil van Niekerk's technique of metering with the histogram. Check out http://www.planetneil.com and read his posts on metering. Or you can just break down and get a Cyber Commander or other light meter!

Thanks again! Oh I thought of one more question... should I leave the reflectors on or take them off?

Shelley
www.photographybyshelley.com

Used with umbrellas, reflectors will prevent spill to the sides. That isn't likely to be an issue here so I'd leave them off.

One other thing you could experiment with is bouncing a Bee off the ceiling of the front porch. Depending on the floorplan it might look interesting. I would use the reflector if you try that.