I just got this octabox very much like the Westcott Apollo Orb but ALOT cheaper and bigger at 47" and wanted to test it out. Having used umbrellas for the majority of my shoots I can't get enough of this thing.
Although I wish I had someone help hold the lightstand. It was windy and it kept catching the wind. But I would love to hear some feedback from you guys, thanks!
Gear used:
5d Mark III
Tamron 24-70mm and Canon 70-200mm
Yongnuo YN-560 III
https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/full/s3/photos/83015/05/10/748466d75ca2...
https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/full/s3/photos/83015/05/10/c6d1a15918ca...
The quality of the light it has produced is good. Your highlights tend to be clipped (your picture is over exposed) which is not a good thing at all. One solution, use more flash power to balance the bright sun lit backgrounds and set a smaller aperture or lower ISO to correct the over exposure. If the flash has no more power you could either move it closer, remove any difussion and or increase the shutter speed to control the sunlight, assuming you were not at full sync speed or that you can do high speed sync.
Method. Take a picture with your flash turned off, but using the flash sync speed if you don't have high speed sync, which is so useful for these situations. Experiment to determine the perfect ambient light exposure, ensuring the brightest significant part of the picture is correctly exposed. EG, assuming your camera has a maximum sync speed of 1/200 and it is a bright and sunny summer's day, use ISO 100, 1/200th of a second at f13 may be very close, depending on where you are in the world. Then take another picture at the same settings but with your flash turned on to light the girl in the forground shadow areas. Adjust the flash power to make sure you do not over expose her, as has happened in some of the above.
Shoot RAW to allow a bit of margin for error and sunlight variations due to clouds and for fine tuning the whole image in your computer. Highlights, like her tee shirt and the bright parts of the scene beyond her must have detail and look natural. Shadows can block up (go black, clip a bit) in many shots and still look great, not whites however.
Thanks for the feed back!
I knowingly blew out the sky. I chose to expose for the trees in the background as oppose to the brightly sun lit area. If I had exposed for the sky/sun lit area the trees in the background would have been under exposed. And having to choose with blown out skies or under exposed background I chose the former as it didn't bother me as much.
I'll see if I can recover the detail on the shirt, I believe thats just a result of my curve adjustment.
Ian's point is that you should have been able to expose correctly for the entire background, including the sky and trees, and then still properly expose your model using flash. There was no reason to over expose the sky. If you didn't have a flash, then a correctly exposed shot in this situation would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. However, if you're good with the blown out sky and over exposed clothing, then never mind.
Yep I realize what Ian was saying. My point was I had one flash and at the time didn't think I could have the shaded area behind the subject (like the area 20-30 feet behind) properly exposed while still having the sun lit area properly exposed. How would you guys have lit it to make everything properly exposed? I still consider myself to be learning to use flash so I am probably missing something you guys would do.
Although I did a test shot where I had the sky properly exposed. This caused the shaded area to be severely under exposed and with the subject lit by flash made it look very 'strobey'. The subject and sun lit area were properly exposed. But the properly exposed subject against the very dark trees made it look unnatural.
I could be wrong but what was my other options here? (Not being rhetorical I really want to know what I could have done)
Also I was able to bring back the detail on the shirt, it was due to curve adjustment. I just masked it out.
I'd be interested to see the shots with correctly exposed highlights and very dark areas. Generallycorrect highlights are non negotiable, whereas other things like localised dark areas may be acceptable.
Without seeing the above mentoned shots it is hard to say as all things photographic tend to be judgement calls.
I would not mind the flash lit part of the scene, including the model, being 1/2 stop under exposed or perhaps even more tha that, to make it look right in the shade area. These balances are easier done with trial and error on the day, than discussed after the fact by people like me who were not there at the time, and have not even seen the correctly exposed versions.
I'm just curious as I was reading through this. Couldn't Salde have taken some bracketed shots, one exposing for the sky one for the trees and one for the subject and then combined them HDR style? I'm curious as I often find it to be a struggle in these brightly lit situations and Summer is upon us :)
These are nice. Personally I think the overexposure works, with the happy expressions and colourful grade - it's quite lifestyle photography-esque to have those elements in a shot, especially with the flaring from the corners.
If you were struggling with the shaded area being very underexposed when exposing for the background, could you have moved your subject closer to the open (like on the 1st photo) but composed with her more to the right hand side of the image, so the shaded areas weren't so prominent (and vice versa with her on the left)?