It is a WB issue. You see, the lights in the hall is yellowish. Your flash is a bit bluish. If you set WB to match the yellow lights then your flash will appear blue and give your pics a cooler color cast. This is compounded by the fact that your flash could not cover the whole subject and thus it appears some parts are cooler while others are warm.

Situation can be rectified by putting a CTO on your flash.

Also reducing your flash power and upping the ISO can help as your sensor will then be able to pick up more ambient to offset the cooler cast from your flash a little.

Calibrating has nothing to do with focus lock. Whether the camera is having front focus or back focus problem, it will still lock focus. Just that after the focus lock, the resulting picture will have area of sharp focus that is either in front or behind the actual focus point.

The inability to lock focus can be caused by a couple of things:

1. You are trying to lock focus with the lens under the MFD (minimum focusing distance) specified. The lens will not be able to lock focus in such a situation. Different lenses have different MFD.

2. You are trying to lock focus on an area that is very low contrast, e.g. a blank wall or an empty sky. The auto focus system on your camera needs some contrasting features to be able to lock focus.

Else, check that your lens is mounted properly and the lens is not gear stripped.

kysham : Sorry, no cure already! The 300mm f2.8 poison has already been absorbed into the whole body. The only known measure is to acquire the said poisoning object (i.e. the lens itself) and let the poison saturate the body and naturally reaching an equilibrium that will remove all symptoms of sickness.

kysham : Hey, don't hate me... I'm a victim too! I'm currently suffering from 85mm f2.8 poisoning sickness. Luckily my cost for preventive measure is not that high.

Alpha Convention pic spam!

1.


2.


3. The lovely Eva


4. Dunno her name.. anyone knows?


5.

Gouki : Thanks for the info

ieR: Only one eye? Which one? Left one or right one? LOL! Just kidding!! Hahahaha!

zstan : Color not ok lor! Looks kinda weird. Dunno how to say it but weird lor...

I'm going to sleep now... later guys! Ciao!

empty-ball : You should give more power to the main light (the front lights) and the hair light should have less power. Just need the hair light to touch the models' heads and leave an outline to separate them from the background.

Hmm... looking at it again I wonder if using 5 lights would be better. One to the upper left. One to the upper right to light Eva's hair in front from the right of the frame. One in front of the three models (lower power ratio) to fill in shadows and 2 from behind them. One from left and one from right - cross lighting from behind to give all three models enough hair light separation from the background.

This post has been edited by shootkk: Mar 16 2011, 11:03 AM

It seems complicated but not really all that tough. All you need is to have a pre-visualized picture in your mind of how you want your end result to be and you should be able to get your picture within a few tries. Got the pre-visualization tips from quite a number of speakers at the convention one of them being Azrul K. Abdullah.

Explanation on my proposed 5 lights setup:

1. The 2 lights set higher than the models (coming about 45 degrees downwards) on left and right in front:

A cross lighting setup that should cover the 3 models without trouble. Lights from up high to be able to touch the model's hair and light them.

2. The one light in front, direct on axis with low power setting.

This is meant to be nothing but a fill flash to lift shadows on the models' faces and to lessen any unsightly shadows being cast by the above cross lighting.

3. The 2 cross lighting strobes at around shoulder height of the models from the back, slightly to the left and right of the group.

This is to create the light outline to separate the models from the background.


When playing with strobes on wireless, you really need to have a pre-visualized result in mind or you're just blindly flashing with unpredictable results.

ieR : Yes. Agreed with you that usually one light is enough. 2 lights and you can cover most things. 3 lights and you can get very creative.

One tip for those of you shooting outdoors and have at least one external flash and a body with a pop-up flash:

You can easily maintain details in the sky by just metering for the sky and then lighting up you subject via wireless flash. You can get dramatic lighting effects too!

Sometimes the sun is just too powerful to overcome. That's why there's the advise not to shoot at high noon.

You could try:

- point your camera away from the sun. Get it to your side.
- find some shade and shoot in the shade.
- minimize the amount of sky you have in your frame.
- get closer to your subject and move your flash closer to your subject.

Melv : Better to off it as it will screw up your intended results. It may bump up areas you want dark and tone down areas you want bright!

ahpingko : When the shutter speed is too high and the flash goes into HSS mode, the flash power is reduced drastically thus making it difficult to light subjects. More so if you are trying to shoot under the sun. So sometimes it's impossible to use wireless flash and get the intended results.

Best if the shutter speed can stay under the HSS limit.

Codyx : What crap! Dun believe everything you hear/read on the net.

DSLT and DSLR are practically the same when the shutter button is pressed. The mirror goes up when a picture is taken while in DSLT the mirror is transparent enough to let the light through to capture the image.

Back focusing is caused by the sensor being misaligned. Calibrating a camera is a matter of shifting the sensor so that it is aligned correctly and you get sharp pictures.

The camera determines focus lock through the autofocus sensors. If the distance light has to travel to the autofocus sensor is not the same as the distance light has to travel to reach the main sensor then you will get either back focus or front focus. So there, the A33/A55 can have back focus/front focus issues.

This post has been edited by shootkk: Mar 16 2011, 05:53 PM

Of course the sensor moves - that's your steady shot mah...

Seriously though, the focus sensor does not move. Just that sometimes it is not aligned correctly. So when we calibrate it means we move the focus sensor so that it becomes more aligned lor.. After calibrating, it just stays in its new position lor.

Codyx: Yes. Most of the time it is. Calibrate one time only. But sometimes some lenses have defects in the lens itself that causes the back focus or front focus. Then calibrating the camera will only make the camera focus sharp with that particular lens. All other lenses will be OOF.

That only happens rarely. So after calibration, your camera should be able to give you sharp pictures with any good lenses.

Haha! 3 layers deep. I remember that one. And you gotta have perspective too!

geekster129: We'll never know until we get to know the models personally and be friends with them. I'd loved to be able to transpose or translate in a portraiture session with the models.

Brief explanation about how to get a picture that is 3 layers deep:

According to Nikt Wong, a street photographer, your pictures need to be 3 layers deep. The 3 layers are:

1. The foreground
2. The middle ground
3. The background

So when composing a picture make sure you have something of interest right in the foreground. Then between your background and your foreground add another element in and that will be your middle ground.

That's how you get a 3 layers deep picture.

Take a look at albnok's picture.

If I read it correctly then the bollard right in front is the foreground.

The human subjects are the middle ground.

And the LRT station and buildings is the background.

This pic really got 3 layers deep!!!

Foreground = cat

Middle ground = person sleeping on table

Background = blurred corridor in the back

Perspective also got wor!! Look at them lights leading you into the background!!

Wah!! This one sure will get Nikt Wong's approval but he likes everything to be in focus ler...

Low ISO? Broad daylight? All hail the king of low ISO, broad daylight king of the hill CCD - the A100!!!!