Canon EOS 550D, Neewer 180 studio flash lights with RT-04 studio flash trigger

[rpcrowe]

As an afterthought... I don't believe that ambient light should have any impact on portrait lighting with studio strobes. Of course, if you are lighting an entire room, you will probably have to include ambient light as a portion of your exposure.

I prefer to shoot portraits with studio strobes in a darkened area in which basically, the only light is/are the modeling light(s).

On most if not all studio strobes, the modeling light will turn off just before the shot so that your only exposure is the flash. On my older White Lightning studio strobes, the modeling light will not go on again until the strobe is recycled and ready to fire again. This is one way to make sure that I don't attempt a shot when the unit is only partially recycled. Other strobes have a ready light to indicate that the flash is ready to fire...

With these old strobes, my sync speed is 1/60 second which is another reason for not shooting with a lot of ambient light interfering with my flash exposure. At 1/60 second, ambient light will have a major impact on exposure and, that ambient light will cause blurring if the subject moves a bit...

Starting off, if you don't have a flash meter, simply put your camera in manual exposure, select your ISO (I usually select ISO 160 unless I need more exposure) set your shutter speed to the proper sync speed and then fire off a series of shots starting at a wide open aperture and closing down the aperture 1/3 or 1/2 stop for each successive exposure. View the various exposures on a calibrated monitor and you will determine which is the best exposure for the distance, power of the lights and your subject.

You can actually use a standard (non flash) light meter (even the in camera meter) by measuring the modeling light and correlating that to the flash exposure. It may not be the same reading and you might have to do some calculating but, it is possible. Here's how it could work... Measure the intensity of the modeling light for each of the series of shots.

If say, the best exposure is f/8. Cross reference that to the exposure reading for the modeling light. If that exposure is, say sync speed at f/4, you will know that the flash exposure is two stops smaller than the exposure from the modeling light. You can replicate the flash f/8 exposure by positioning your lights so that the exposure reads f/4.

Like I said, this can take a bit of mental arithmetic but, you can actually correlate the flash exposure from the camera's meter reading of the modeling lights...

[HEDS]

Thank you all, for your helpful comments, they are much appreciated. I will definitely check out the strobist, do lots of experimentation and make lots of mistakes!

[Manfred M]

Thank you all, for your helpful comments, they are much appreciated. I will definitely check out the strobist, do lots of experimentation and make lots of mistakes!

Strobist is primarily aimed at people shooting small flash. While there are some areas of overlap with studio lights, these are not as great as you might think.