Hi Chuck and others,
Good news!
Last Friday the swivel heads came in, and yesterday the brolly boxes
arrived. :)
Spare time seems to be "sparse time", so I've only had about 15
minutes to play with the set-up (though I hope to get around to it
some more over the weekend).
There were a few unforeseen issues in the set-up, for which I'll have
to figure out a solution:
1) I mounted the brolly boxes on the swivel heads with the flashes; no
problem. But... the umbrellas are wide and the tripod legs are
preventing the umbrellas from being angled at some 45 degrees from
above. I may figure out an easy way around this, but I certainly
welcome suggestions.
Either way: this issue caused the umbrellas (and flashes) to be
shooting perpendicularly from the table top (i.e. from the side of the
subject, but then positioned higher than the subject, so it's not from
the very side).
2) The daylight was just starting to fade and the location where I was
taking the pictures was relatively dark. This caused great
difficulties for the Auto Focus to do its work. The built in flash
cannot pop up, as the flash shoe cable (T-cord) blocks it. I guess I
could use an external (small) lamp to make focussing easier, but then
I'd be throwing incandescent light into the mix. I tried manual
focussing but that's pretty tough too. I guess I need to shoot during
the daytime then...
Then, the set-up was:
E-500 + 14-45 F3.5-5.6, Manual, 1/160 @ f5.6, ISO 100, two T20s, one
to the left, one to the right of the subject, both firing into the
brolly boxes, coming straight from the side. Distance from flash to
diffuser (i.e. round part of the umbrella) +/- 20 cm, distance of
diffuser to subject +/- 25 cm.
The results are pretty pleasing, but not perfect. If you consider this
shot (full size, unedited):
http://www.millennics.com/test/PA215718.JPG
The WB was not yet set properly; in reality, the backdrop is plain
white.
Now, my two main issues with the pictures are:
1) Some shadows still occur. This was surprising to me. Perhaps the
high, perpendicular, position of the flashes relative to the subject,
caused that? Is this something that can easily be improved (reflector?
45 degree angles from above? something else?)
2) Another unexpected issue are the two 'gleam' lines running over the
length of the subject.
To illustrate this, consider:
http://www.millennics.com/test/PA215718_with_comments.jpg
Could it perhaps be that the light was not diffuse enough?
Any ideas how I can improve this?
Cheers,
Olafo
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