Thinking of getting two 430EXIIs to go with my 580EXII
Discussion
Having had a couple of disapointments getting pros to photograph my kitchens, I've decided I need to be able to do this myself. With this in mind, and as I already have a 1000D with a Canon 10-22 lens and a 580EXII, I'm planning to use the wireless feature to fire a couple of 430s to get a suitably portable off-camera flash setup.
I've been watching YouTube tutorials on this subject, though they tend to be biased towards portrait photography, and I've even been reading the manuals. But I thought I would put my plans forward here for comments. I'm planning to use a hot shoe cable to fire the 580, BTW, which I will mount on a tripod as I will the other guns.
I've been watching YouTube tutorials on this subject, though they tend to be biased towards portrait photography, and I've even been reading the manuals. But I thought I would put my plans forward here for comments. I'm planning to use a hot shoe cable to fire the 580, BTW, which I will mount on a tripod as I will the other guns.
For shots like that I'd be tempted to sell the 580 and put the money for the 430s to a set of Elinchrom Quadra Rangers, more power, just as portable and more flexible with a full range of lighting modifiers available.
You can rent them from The Flash Centre to see how you get on, I've ordered a set, I was so impressed with them on car shoots for work.
You can rent them from The Flash Centre to see how you get on, I've ordered a set, I was so impressed with them on car shoots for work.
Have you seen the post at Strobist.co. related to shooting interiors (generally, but I sem to recall one the majored on a kitchen) with speedlites? The search option using the word "Interiors" should come up with soe useful posts to scroll through and read spread over several years. Admittedly not Canon flash system stuff but interesting nevertheless.
Secondly - what is it about the pro efforts that you have already commissioned that you find disappointing? Might it be something to do more with post processing than original lighting?
For example I have always thought that most kitchen shots have some reliance on capturing the lighting potential to illustrate how the under unit lighting and so on makes the the space open or closed depending on mood, time of day, WHY. That may means that the shot has to deal with the colour rendering for rather different white balance sources. You could just blast them with a single source light temperature but it may not give entirely the result you want without some extended effort setting up the scene with flash lighting rather than using the original sources.
An alternative might be to shoot mainly using the 'natural' sources available and then undertake selective white balance editing in post processing. This might involve taking several versions of the same shot using a different WB setting and then blending them on PP. Shooting RAW and creating several version of the same single shot in PP then blending them. (Much the same except that one could use a hand held shot more readily whereas multiple original exposures may well dictate a mounted camera - tripod/bracket/something fixed to ensure the camera does not move between frames.
Or one might use an application that allows easy selective adjustment of WB as a directly accessible feature (just to make it a little easier). There's an application called Oloneo that sets out to create and easy blend tool for multiple light sources in a scene based on multiple "exposures". See the relevant video on the linked page.
If it's not just lighting ... then you may need to consider the usual architectural photography issues like perspective correction (whether at shoot time using a specific type of lens or in PP using perspective correction features). Getting the lighting to look right in conjunction with these considerations may sometimes be an extra challenge, especially in smaller rooms. (I tend to think that starting out with US sized rooms the size of an aircraft hangar is cheating somewhat ....
)
As a further thought ... whilst a wireless operated system will more than likely work for you it's just possible that sometimes a camouflaged light position does not allow either line of sight or a bounced signal to function reliably, in which case a radio trigger system (as per Mark's suggestion of the Elinchrom solution iirc but you can get the same for speedlites independently) could work well. I have some Elinchrom Skyport trigger sets for that purpose and they work well with the benefit that they are small and fairly easy to hide should concealment be a requirement in the shot.
Secondly - what is it about the pro efforts that you have already commissioned that you find disappointing? Might it be something to do more with post processing than original lighting?
For example I have always thought that most kitchen shots have some reliance on capturing the lighting potential to illustrate how the under unit lighting and so on makes the the space open or closed depending on mood, time of day, WHY. That may means that the shot has to deal with the colour rendering for rather different white balance sources. You could just blast them with a single source light temperature but it may not give entirely the result you want without some extended effort setting up the scene with flash lighting rather than using the original sources.
An alternative might be to shoot mainly using the 'natural' sources available and then undertake selective white balance editing in post processing. This might involve taking several versions of the same shot using a different WB setting and then blending them on PP. Shooting RAW and creating several version of the same single shot in PP then blending them. (Much the same except that one could use a hand held shot more readily whereas multiple original exposures may well dictate a mounted camera - tripod/bracket/something fixed to ensure the camera does not move between frames.
Or one might use an application that allows easy selective adjustment of WB as a directly accessible feature (just to make it a little easier). There's an application called Oloneo that sets out to create and easy blend tool for multiple light sources in a scene based on multiple "exposures". See the relevant video on the linked page.
If it's not just lighting ... then you may need to consider the usual architectural photography issues like perspective correction (whether at shoot time using a specific type of lens or in PP using perspective correction features). Getting the lighting to look right in conjunction with these considerations may sometimes be an extra challenge, especially in smaller rooms. (I tend to think that starting out with US sized rooms the size of an aircraft hangar is cheating somewhat ....
)As a further thought ... whilst a wireless operated system will more than likely work for you it's just possible that sometimes a camouflaged light position does not allow either line of sight or a bounced signal to function reliably, in which case a radio trigger system (as per Mark's suggestion of the Elinchrom solution iirc but you can get the same for speedlites independently) could work well. I have some Elinchrom Skyport trigger sets for that purpose and they work well with the benefit that they are small and fairly easy to hide should concealment be a requirement in the shot.
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