540 flash for wedding photography

[Mark Roberts]

Scott Loveless wrote:

>Hey, Mark!  You enlightened us over the weekend about using P-TTL flash 
>with the camera on "manual".  Care to re-enlighten?  I'm afraid the 
>booze and lack of sleep has purged that memory from the old noggin.

You talkin' to me or the other Mark? (You weren't alone with regards to 
booze and lack of sleep.)

Anyway, here's how you do it:

Set camera to manual exposure.
Attach flash with bounce card.
Set flash to P-TTL auto.

Set shutter speed the slowest speed you feel safe hand-holding; if 
you're using a zoom, assume the longest focal length it reaches.

Set the aperture a stop or two down from wide open -- there's something 
of a judgment call here because it depends on the focal length of the 
lens your using, how much DOF you want and how much ambient light there 
is. 

The result of the above procedure should be that the meter in the 
camera will show underexposure pretty much everywhere you point it (in 
locations you're going to be shooting the wedding). If it regularly 
shows more than two stops of underexposure or if it shows overexposure 
anywhere you'll need to change shutter speed, aperture or ISO. You 
often have to compromise here...

So now you've got a slow shutter speed you can hand-hold, an aperture 
that gives you the DOF you want and exposure that varies from perfect 
to "about-two-stops-under" everywhere you're shooting. The P-TTL flash 
will automatically provide whatever amount of fill is necessary to make 
the overall exposure good. (Your manual exposure setting shouldn't show 
overexposure anywhere because, obviously, the flash can't subtract 
ambient light when there's too much, it can only provide extra light 
when there's too little.)

You can experiment with dialing in a little underexposure to the flash, 
to see if it suits your equipment setup and/or taste.

This setup won't deliver *perfect* results all the time but it will 
give you very usable results almost all the time. When you're in really 
dark spots (two stops under on the meter) the flash will be 
contributing more of the total exposure than you'd ideally like. And 
when you're in bright areas it will contribute nothing. But you'll 
almost always get something you can use. This is what you want for 
weddings because, for most shots, you get only one chance. 

I learned this technique from a local wedding pro who does high end 
(*very* expensive) weddings. He shoots mostly PJ style (but with the 
usual requisite posed shots). He usually works alone unless he's 
providing video services as well. He does extraordinary work and makes 
a ton of money doing it. He's won scads of awards, which he refuses to 
display in his studio: He'll only display prints of his work there. 

We met when an "Internet Directory Service" tried to scam him and gave 
me and my web site as a reference even though I had nothing to do with 
them. He called their bluff by calling me :) I worked a couple of 
weddings with him to see if I might do some work for him. I decided 
against getting into wedding photography but I learned a *lot* from the 
experience.