Hi - I was in Houston last weekend for my oldest-daughter's outdoor wedding. The photographer - who had complete control of Everything - had 4 unmodified Speedlites at each corner of the reception area, probably separated by 100 feet. I asked him what they were for: "background separation" he replied, and told me they were set to 1/32 manual power. He had a flash bracket with his Canon 70D, and a Gary Fong Lightspere. He even lent me one of his Paul C. Buff radio controllers, but unfortunately my Canon 580EX doesn't have a PC connection (seemed a little odd, but it was dark and I couldn't tell, but I could not hook it up to the controller).
Anyway, my question is: for you guys that shoot outdoor nighttime events, is this a technique you use or would consider?
Another question is: How do you handle lighting the people, etc.? I know direct flash is a no-no, and a Gary Fong is denounced as "Tupperware". So what do you do? I tried a couple of high-ISO, no-flash shots, but they really were not good. So I had no choice but to angle my flash head and pull out the little bounce card. They were decent.
Would love to hear thoughts and opinions and ideas and what you do.
Dave
Comments
Update - now that I've looked at the 70D manual, I have no idea what he connected his radio controller to on the camera.
In thinking about it, he probably had an on-camera controller with a hot-shoe mount, and what he gave me (and also what was connected to his off-camera flashes) was just a receiver. It actually looked like a mini garage-door opener with a little antenna. The 600D, 70D, and my 6D do not have any kind of connection on them that is called PC.
Dave
On a related note, he used another technique which I really didn't care for, what I refer to as "Miami Herald!!". He would walk along the outside edge of the dance floor during songs that got a lot of people up, raise his camera up as high as he could reach, point downwards, and rapid-fire take as many photos as he could until I'm assuming the flash couldn't keep up (continuous mode on camera I'm assuming). I cannot imagine what his his picture count was at the end of the night. It seemed to me, really, "let me grab 10 shots and hope for at least 1 I can use". I didn't care for it, but everyone has their ways.
Dave
I'm sure this guy was a full-time pro, but I cannot fathom how much work he has to do after one of these weddings.
Dave
- There were over 1000 photos, many, many repeats of just about the same shot, random B+Ws thrown in.
- The JPeg file sizes were huge! It reminds me of when I was first starting in LR, and when I would convert a photo from RAW to JPeg, I put no numbers in the "long edge" and "resolution" boxes, which led to file sizes in the 10-15 MB range. (Now, for screen use, I use 1500 pixels, 150 per inch; for print, I use 3000 and 300, but that's just me)
- It wasn't that a lot of the photos were not "sharp", but a lot of them looked like he took the "Clarity" slider all the way to the left. Very "pasty" looking. I don't know if he blindly used LR presets.
- The wedding was April 15th. Given the number of photos "delivered", I can only imagine the number of photos he actually took. It's mind boggling to me they were ready in 2-1/2 weeks. But, from what I can see, his style of "developing" is really not mine.
As I wrote, my kid is happy - thrilled, actually - so that's all that matters. I would attach a few, but they are huge.
Dave
I know it's quality over convenience, but I haven't had an issue since I started doing things this way.
Dave