I don't normally show my family snapshots here but I've been inspired by
Nathan to show a few and also comment a bit on some flash photography
experiments. <http://www.chucknorcutt.com/Christmas_2007/index.htm>
The first 14 shots are in my son's house on Christmas morning. Yes, for
those who've been around here a long time he's the helicopter pilot. The
first 7 are with flash and the next 7 at ISO 3200 w/o flash. The family
room with the tree has a very high cathedral ceiling which extends up
and to the right. I had previously discovered this room is not very
amenable to typical bounce flash. But it also has a balcony area about
8 feet long from the second floor hallway. I placed two T-32's up there
with radio triggers aimed to flood the first floor with background light
while the main light was provided by a Canyon 540EZ with Lumiquest
diffuser on a Stroboframe 350 bracket. This gave me nice, uniform
illumination but, unfortunately, I didn't think until later that I
wasn't getting enough light from the tree lights for them to register at
1/30 at f/11 so the scene doesn't look as Christmas-like as it should.
I was using f/11 since the T-32's were running at full power. Next time
I'll have to drop them down to 1/4 power and try shooting at f/5.6.
I'm also not thrilled with my ISO 3200 shots as it just wasn't enough.
I was shooting at f/4 and the shutter speeds weren't really fast enough
(typically 1/50 at 80mm) to prevent motion blur so nothing is really
sharp. So, next time flash will still rule but at lower power.
All the remaining shots are at my daughter-in-law's mother's house where
we went for Christmas dinner with the rest of my daughter-in-law's
family. This house has more typical ceiling heights but also has one
room with a somewhat higher and angled ceiling. Here I just used the
540EZ bounced off the ceiling just slightly ahead of my shooting
position and with a small diffuser panel pulled up to project a bit of
fill light straight ahead. I had not previously used this flash in that
manner and I think it did well.
And, of course, my final comment. All flash photos you see here are
completely manual exposure. There is no automation of any kind nor did
I even bother to use my flash meter... just a few test exposures and
chimping the histogram. A T-32 could have been used to do the same as
the 540EZ except that the 540EZ has an 8-stop manual range vs. the
T-32's more restrictive full and 1/4 power settings. Of course, you can
also vary the ISO and/or aperture dials with the T-32 to make up the
difference.
Chuck Norcutt
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