Dr Flash wrote:
> Dr. Flash always recommend manual flash control for best and
> consistent results. But if you want to shoot digital TTL (and
> especially if it's Canon TTL) then you should read every article you can
> find on this page with TTL or fill flash in the title.
May I rant? Please? How about a mini-rant? Ok, just an observation then.
I'm at a complete loss as to what has happened with flash technology. Back in
the near-darkages, we had the OUTSTANDING, yet limited OTF flash control of the
OM system. Other manufacturers had their own version of TTL, but the OM system
stood alone. However, it didn't do so hot with outdoor fill. Didn't really
matter too much, though, because with the limitation of 1/60 flash-sync it made
it pretty tough to do outdoor flash, anyway. Also, OTF did tend to over-expose
your subject if the subject occupied too small of the picture. (maybe an F280
addresses that, I don't know).
Olympus put one of the very best flash-exposure systems in the IS-series. This
uses the AF system to determine camera-to-subject distance and sets the flash
power accordingly. This is EXACTLY the way I work with manual flash. There
were several different modes which you could place the camera in which
automatically adjusted for outdoor fill, vs indoor blasting. The ESP metering
made sure that the background was properly exposed when set on fill and the
subject wouldn't get overpowered. If there was a flaw with this system, it was
because the flash (G40) ran out of oomph beyond 15 feet and the lens wasn't
bright enough to really compensate. Also, you were limited to direct,
unmodified lighting. No bounce, no domes, no softboxes, etc... Of course,
this system was very primative as it only handled the on-camera flash.
Minolta must have licensed the same technology, because they put the same
capabilities in their later film cameras, such as the D7 as well as the A-X
line. Did it work? It worked extremely well. One thing you will not find is
anybody seriously complaining about the Minolta (now Sony) flash system. There
are a handful of situations where the Minolta system mistepped, but it's only
real flaw is that it wasn't branded with Nikon or Canon. The world gladly
passed it by in the mad rush towards megapixels. "D*mn the flashes, more
pixels ahead!"
I've been playing around with a friend's set of Olympus FL50s on the E-1. It
does a remarkable job and is well executed. However, the distance calculation
is somewhat overridden by preflash and a hyperactive ESP mode. It does very
very well, especially when using two or more flashes off-camera, but there is
so much "black magic" going on that when it falls off a cliff, there is no rymn
or reason for the failure. Like the 3D color matrix metering in the Nikon F5,
it did a fantastic job 95% of the time, but when it blew exposure it did so in
a non-linear fashion as it guessed the scene so wrong it applied the wrong
table of assumptions to the calculation. Again, were talking about the unusual
situation where it blew apart, not the norm, however. The Olympus flash system
does remarkably well, but with most (or all) of these wireless systems, they
are IR based. For me, that is a fatal flaw as I'm constantly placing my
off-camera flashes in bizaar
locations with no clean line-of-sight to the camera. Flashes go in balconies,
inside lamp shades, clamped to suspended ceilings or even placed inside
suspended ceilings shining down through lighting fixtures or vents. Those
crazy ebay wireless triggers have been a lifesaver for me.
My on-camera flash gear comprises of Vivitar 285HV flashes. For event shoots,
I usually drag along my monolights for overall room lighting. My typical
configuration is to put the ambient lighting about 2-stops down. This is where
you make your compromises in ISO, Aperture and Shutterspeed. I do this one
MAMMOTH shoot every year where I now place two monolights and a single 285HV up
in the balcony with the stands raised up so the lights are almost in the stage
lights. This gives me a working F5.0 across an entire 100' wide stage with
minimal fall-off to the very back of the stage. So, three strobes light about
a 100' by 50' area. When working down front, I'll also use an on-camera 285HV
dialed in about 1/4 power to act as a fill light when shooting close.
Otherwise, the harsh imitation stage-lighting tends to give hard shadows with
black gullies in the wrinkles. Not pretty.
Manual exposure control of flash gear is necessary when you have tons of mixed
lighting. Where it struggles, however, is when you have aggressively changing
lighting conditions. Last month, I shot an outdoor wedding under a gazebo.
During the ceremony itself, it went from overcast to bright sunshine, to
overcast again. The celebrants were actually out from under the gazebo roof
and standing in the sun. The sun happened to be directly behind them and the
sun was reflecting off of the water. Sunny-16 on steroids. This was one
really tough lighting situation and even though I rarely use flash during
ceremonies, I had to this time--there was absolutely no way around it. I did
shoot Delta 400 in the OM-4T with no flash (and on auto--F8 and be there), but
those ended up being a bit too flat in the shadows to be useable. Frankly, in
all my years of wedding shoots, this one proved to be the most difficult from a
lighting perspective. What I SHOULD have
done was shoot the ceremony with the IS-3/G40. I know from experience that it
would have nailed it in these conditions. As it was, I had to spend a huge
amount of time during RAW conversion to get the files usable. Thank goodness,
the E-1 has a wider than normal exposure latitude.
AG
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|