A few more shots from my Garage..

[Nitro-C5]

All shots taken in my Garage this morning:

[Grey Ghost]

# 3 would be my favorite of the series. What type of metering for something like this?

[Nitro-C5]

Originally Posted by Grey Ghost

# 3 would be my favorite of the series. What type of metering for something like this?

I mostly WAG'd it. Wanted to block out pretty much all off the ambient so I used Manual Exposure (Evaluative Metering) about -3 stops....then set my Speedlites at -2 stops. It was abit tricky at first but alot of trial and error dialed it in pretty good after about 15 minutes.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

What type of metering for something like this?

How does a specific type metering factor into this type of shot?

[DAB]

Originally Posted by Thomas

How does a specific type metering factor into this type of shot?

spot meter, area meter....

i'm guessing spot would be best.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by DAB

spot meter, area meter....

i'm guessing spot would be best.

ANY metering is gonna show underexposure when you're turning your background black. What difference does metering make at this point? This was a manual exposure.

Unless he's doing this differently than I think.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Meta for this shot

[Nitro-C5]

Originally Posted by Thomas

ANY metering is gonna show underexposure when you're turning your background black. What difference does metering make at this point? This was a manual exposure.

Unless he's doing this differently than I think.

You are right. The only importance of the metering is to make sure that I was approx 3 stops below metered value to ensure that black was going to be black.

The most challenging part was balancing the light from the fire with that of the speedlites. I simply used the histogram after the first expostue then made adjustments to shutter ensuring that the flames were not overexposed.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

When I do these tabletop shots or any shot using flash as the only light source I drop my film speed to 50 and typically use 1/125th shutter with a smaller aperture. F11 for instance. That way I'm guaranteed ambient light will not affect my shot regardless of what metering mode I select. Balancing flash and ambient is another matter.

If you were to turn off the strobes on the motorcycle pics for instance, the pic would be black at 1/125th and F11 indoors.

The most challenging part was balancing the light from the fire with that of the speedlites

THAT would be extremely tricky I imagine. Not to mention I'd burn the house down.

[Nitro-C5]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Meta for this shot

How did you light that. Looks like a glass coffee table with maybe a white background that you hit with a gel'd strobe?

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

How did you light that. Looks like a glass coffee table with maybe a white background that you hit with a gel'd strobe?

Pretty much. The table is a small end table in the family room. The background is the wall with a green gel on a speedlite. The key light came from a B800 with a 20 degree grid.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

This was the same set up, only I turned the wall black, and added the speedlite to the rear of the toy.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

I've got an upcoming shoot with these two girls. They're sisters, and very good friends of my wife and I. I took these at a banquet last Friday night. Nothing special, just snapshots. I don't do a lot of people pictures and they both agreed to sit still for me. I'm going to try and build a small portfolio and they agreed to be my guinea pigs.

We met the girls at the dog training school I teach at, and before they aged out of the Juniors program, we ended up sending both to Westminster, each with a different one of our dogs. Somehow, they went from a couple little girls to what you see here.