D300 and studio lights (Help!!!)

Hammerhead64

Hammerhead64

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Name
Paul
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:help:I am hiring some studio lights from my camera club tomorrow and was wondering if anyone has any tips on settings when using with a D300.

Regards

Paul
 
Shoot raw, iso 100, F11-16, 1/60th on shutter, try these as a starting point.
 
Thx (y).... I'll give them a go.

Should I be able to trigger the lights using the commander setting. Or is it a must to use a hot shoe cable.
 
Glen said:
Shoot raw, iso 100, F11-16, 1/60th on shutter, try these as a starting point.
Click to expand...


Use iso 200 as this is the camera's native iso setting, the D300 doesn't have a true iso 100 setting it is electronically reproduced by the camera
 
Hammerhead64 said:
Thx (y).... I'll give them a go.

Should I be able to trigger the lights using the commander setting. Or is it a must to use a hot shoe cable.
Click to expand...

Do they have slave cells?

Don't use commander, just set the flash to 1/64th power. If you can get a piece of old exposed and processed film and tape it across the front of the pop up flash. That will stop the actual flash whilst letting the IR go through which should trigger the flashes.

Commander will set off the Slave cells during the "command" part of the flash, which will be too early for the actual exposure, thereby you will miss the flash.
 
I have got all the kit but I'm not sure what it includes yet, although I have the two main lights. there are umbrellas and poles and stuff.

barneyrubble ...(luv the cartoon) (y)

Not sure if there are slave cells? I'll have to root around to see if I've got some old film lying around....is there anything else that could be used.

Is the hot shoe a standard cable?
 
I would use a 1/125 rather than 1/60. The D300 synchs at 1/250 anyway - and as shutter speed doesn't come into it other than for synch, the flash duration is your shutter speed. Make it as fast as you can - unless you are balancing ambient of course.

Do it in full manual, you will learn more. You simply pick a shutter speed that will allow the flash to synch (check in your book tonight, but I am sure it will be 1/250 because Nikon have synched at this speed for 25years). Then you choose a working aperture for the shots you are taking - I would try and go for f8 myself for portraits/figure shots. Then adjust the flash output to suit - the lower the f stop used, the faster they will recycle. Do you have a flash meter? You need one to work more easily with flash - simply fire the flash by pluggung the synch lead into your light meter - when you press the button the flash fires and the meter takes its reading - use an incident light dome and point it half across the the direction of the light - this gives an immediate average, instead of taking a shadow and a highlight reading then interpolating the two!
 
Thx ...... for all the tips and hints. I have just put the lights onto the stands and powered them up took a few test shots and the D300 syncs fine ... I can't believe it was that easy. My Sony A100 would not sync with the lights at all on a studio night at the club recently.

The date for the shoot is tomorrow so I'll play with the settings tomorrow now I know the camera and lights work together.

Dal get the makeup ready for those models :D you can be my assistant :LOL:
 
I would be wary of using 1/250 sec as your shutter speed, many studio flash units are not as quick as speedlite type units and you may encounter a slight fall off as the shutter closes.

1/125 is the usually the recommended max speed for studio flash units.
 
Hammerhead64 said:
Thx ...... for all the tips and hints. I have just put the lights onto the stands and powered them up took a few test shots and the D300 syncs fine ... I can't believe it was that easy. My Sony A100 would not sync with the lights at all on a studio night at the club recently.

The date for the shoot is tomorrow so I'll play with the settings tomorrow now I know the camera and lights work together.

Dal get the makeup ready for those models :D you can be my assistant :LOL:
Click to expand...

Just checking - you got everything in manual on the cam?
 
EdBray said:
I would be wary of using 1/250 sec as your shutter speed, many studio flash units are not as quick as speedlite type units and you may encounter a slight fall off as the shutter closes.

1/125 is the usually the recommended max speed for studio flash units.
Click to expand...

Dead right. And anyway, there's no point in using very fast shutter speeds with studio flash.

The problem can get worse if using very cheap radio triggers - because of the inherent circuitry delays, sometimes a shutter speed of .faster than 1/30th won't synch.
 
Make sure you have wb set to flash and agree 125th is better.
 
po10c said:
This is 2 complicated for me.... :)
Click to expand...

Yeah ..... right without your major input I would have been stuffed.

Anyway here's an image from my first try with studio lights. The model forgot their makeup so it looks too much like Daz for my liking :D but I do like this style of image.

2876593414_8f3c4fe55e_o.jpg



Did loads of other shots and the settings were all over the place settings that shouldn't have work did and vice versa ..... happy with a few so I think it needs some more practice. Lots of fun though.
 
What a stunning model that is paul :D.

Was a great laugh with all that gear and a nice learning curve.

Turns out that using the flash on my D50 to fire the studio lights was the issue for me as mine needs to fire in manual as TTL fires a pre-flash just before the main one. Typical that we found it out so late in the day.

When we gonna hire them all again?
 
Good effort, although I would have prefered a highlight in the eye and not such a tight crop to the chin.
 
Edbray,

thx for the response do you have any ideas on how I would have set the lighting up to get the highlight in the eye. :thinking:

Paul
 
Very slightly move either, the head, the light or the camera position.

It is a bit trial and error to be honest and you don't need to move any of the parts very much. Worth looking for either in the viewfinder or even on the LCD after you have taken an image. Just that dot in the eye makes all the difference.

If I have time at the weekend, I will try to take one to show you.

Not quite the same, but you may get an idea!
ScottcroppedBW-1-1.jpg
 
I agree. one my shutter was over 1/300 I could see the shurer close halfway over the photo. When I set my shutter to low then the shots where over exposed. I used (s) priority and auto iso disabled set to iso200. I closed all curtans and relyed onley on studio globes (150wat - 250wat flash) on the moddel. my studio lights was set to lowerst and pix stil come out over exposed. Can you help.

EdBray said:
I would be wary of using 1/250 sec as your shutter speed, many studio flash units are not as quick as speedlite type units and you may encounter a slight fall off as the shutter closes.

1/125 is the usually the recommended max speed for studio flash units.
Click to expand...
 
You usually control the exposure with controlling the aperture setting after taking a reading with a flash meter. If you then require more or less light you can open or shut the aperture or move the light sources (flash heads) either closer to or further away from the subject. Now the biggy! You can not shoot in auto modes or auto ISO!

Set the camera into Manual mode, that's the one with the big M

You set the shutter speed in manual to a suitable speed to give you a full flash sync (typically 1/100 or 1/125 wth studio flash even if your speedlight syncs at 1/200 or 1/250).

You set your ISO to the lowest possible standard setting (unless you find you need more) say ISO 100 for Canon and ISO 200 for Nikon.

You then take a Flash Meter reading from each flash head (at the subject distance) and set the proportions of the lights to give you the result you want. Then take a further reading at the subject position from the main light (looking towards the camera) and adjust the aperture to the reading obtained (possibly close down a further 1/2 stop if you find that the image is slightly overexposed).

Now why can't we use auto modes?

If you set aperture priority (AV, A) you may find that once your aperture has been set the shutter speed is very low as the camera tries to over compensate for the low light. When the flash fires the image will be very overexposed.

If you set shutter priority (TV, S) you will find that the aperture is open to it's max to try to enable as much light as possible into the camera to enable a reasonable exposure. When the flash fires the image will be very overexposed.

If you set Auto ISO the ISO will rise to compensate for the dim conditions, when you fire the flash, the image will be very overexposed.

When shooting with studio flash I am usually using a shutter speed of 1/125 sec, an ISO of 100 and usually try to set the aperture between f5.6 and f8 for an average shot (hopefully i don't take many average shots). Obviously all of these are open to change if I want to be more creative.

Hope this helps!
 
Gary120190 said:
I would say:
ISO 400
F.9 - F.11 (play around)
with a shutter speed of about 1/90th
Gary :)
Click to expand...
Why would you want to set an ISO of 400?
Cameras are getting better, but the quality at ISO 100 is still far better than at 400 on every camera I've used
 
wHY GUESS?
Use a flashmeter, and unless you WANT a grainy image, set the lowest ISO possible

Definatally set on 60th/125 + manual. From there outwards you can tweak out the power settngs, adjust the apeture or moe the heads to fine tune the lighting and exposure
 
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