F/1.4 = Beauty and Mulah!!! Help?

[stringfieldphotography]

Questions,

I was recently helping out a professional photography take photos of a Minor league team, and he was shooting with a Mark II 5D with a 85mm prime lens which I think went to 1.4. His lighting system was external with umbrellas and pocket wizards.

Moving along to the question...

The day was completely overcast, and when he took his portraits of the players with the sky in the background, it looked like the sky was completely Blue with clouds in it, while keeping the player in great, sharp focus and not overexposing at all! The whole entire photo was very well exposed. HoW?

So I tried to go do this by setting my 50mm lens to F/1.8 @ 200 shutter with my flash set on very low in complete daylight. I faced up towards the sky with my subject taking up most of the frame...and TOTALLY OVEREXPOSED! I tried a hundred different settings with bracketing and stopping down, up, sideways, I'm confused, can someone help me out?

[Canuck935]

First step is to meter for and set your exposure for the background, and even intentionally underexposing to get a darker sky. Now use that exposure (or equivalent) and add the flash to get a good exposure of your subject.

[Frog]

People ask questions I don't know to ask and I always appreciate that and the answers.

[opus]

any chance he was using a filter?

[Grandpaw]

Ask the photographer you were helping.how they did it. You couldn't get a more accurate answer to your question than they would give you, Jeff :thumbsup:

[mjs1973]

Yup, sounds like they were using the flash to light the subject, while exposing for the sky. That is the same way that I created the images in this thread.

Another round of BB images

[Franglais]

The 5D Mk 2 has a flash sync speed of maximum 1/200s. At 100 ISO in daylight to get the scene properly exposed he must have been at something like 1/200s f5.6. Forget the fact he had an f1.4 lens, this is irrelevant. He certainly wasn't using it at full aperture. As others have said he was exposing for ambient light and using the flash for fill-in.

If he managed to tun a white cloudy sky blue he might have been using a graduated blue filter I suppose

[another view]

he must have been at something like 1/200s f5.6

To add to this, it could be f8 or f11 too which would give a little more depth of field to be sure everyone in the group is in sharp focus. Like the others have said, it's a matter of exposing for the sky (ambient daylight) and adding flash so that the people (the subjects) are not underexposed. This is really nothing other than a fill flash technique, although in this case it's taken to a high level. It's possible that the lights he was using were powerful enough that they could properly expose the people in the shot who were (probably in the shade) at 1/200 and f5.6 (or slightly slower and smaller aperture as I mentioned in the first sentence). It's hard to do stuff like this with small on-camera flash when there's a lot of light and you want to use a small aperture, just not much power. You're limited by equipment - a bit of experimenting outside on a sunny day with flash and you'll quickly see what I mean.

One question though, were you looking at finished images and/or prints with the blue sky? Could it have just been photoshopped in afterwards (probably not uncommon for something like this)? No amount of equipment will clear out an overcast sky!

OTOH, set the camera for Tungsten white balance. Put an amber gels on the flashes. Everything lit by flash (the people) will have proper color balance. The sky and everything else in the background will be blue. This is a good "when all else fails" technique that can sometimes give really nice results in really boring situations.

[stringfieldphotography]

Thanks for the response everyone. I really appreciate it and I did go out and experiment a little bit with my two flashes. You're right, although the shutter can only go to 1/200s I just bump my F stop to F/8 or 11 and I expose for the sky to get it a little darker. I also bump up my flash a little bit to equal the sunlight. It's still not perfect but I have a good understanding of what it takes now!

Michael

www.michaelstringfield.com
www.stringfieldphotography.com