What did you call me???

I had a bit of fun today. My first outing in the middle of broad daylight armed with some speedlites, a lighting stand, remote radio triggers and a sense of humour.

See the lighting diagram below.

The sun was out in all it glory which made this a bitt of a challenge for me (being my first time). As you can see, the sun was on camera right (see shadows on the ground).

Basically, I treated the sun as the main light and used my speedlites as the second light to balance the main light. The trick is to get the ambient exposure correct (which would give a properly exposed background). I found that f/8 1/250 ISO 200 to be just right (1/250 being the highest shutter speed for the camera although the 1D Mark III supposed to sync at 1/300). At this exposure, the background would be correctly exposed but the 2 guys would appear almost as silhouettes. That’s where the speedlites came in. I initially started with 1 speedlite but found that I had to set it at 1/4 power to get the right balance. As I wanted a faster refresh time for the speedlites, I decided to use 2 speedlites at 1/8 power each. Both speedlites were mounted on a lighting stand and triggered by radio remote trigger (not the Pocket wizards but the china cousins).

Everything looks perfect (except for me and my tummy). If I were to do it again I would angle the light more to create some soft shadows on the faces. I would also try to use an ND (probably 4) filter so that I have more lee way with the background ambient exposure.

Canon 1D Mark III
EF 16-35 mm f/2.8 L at 22mm
Speedlite 580EX II (A)
Speedlite 580 EX (B)

F/8 1/250th ISO 200 manual exposure
Light A and B at 1/8 power Triggered by radio trigger