share your photography here

[beebop]

Pocket wizards sell for around rp2,000,000 and the odins sell for rp1,200,000. Thats quite a difference in price. Untill now all the people i know via various photography forums who use them have been satisfied. Some even claim they are better than pocket wizards as they have no noise interference issues with the 580ex speedlights.
I dont see the need to set your key lights 1-2 stops over due to distance. If youre using a light meter you only need get your reading from the area your subject will be. The light meter will tell you what aperture it will acheive at that distance. The further away the light, the more power you will need to acheive the desired aperture.
I dont own a light meter yet but i would assume that i would in a studio condition set my camera to max shutter sync speed, base native ISO and the aperture will be chosen as to what depth i wish to have. Then i would use the light meter to power the strobes around my chosen aperture plus or minus depending on the desired effect you wish to achieve. After some time you wont need the incident meter any more because of enough experience to acurately guess strobe power.

[Index]

Just compare from this to this. phottix odin with extra receiver will cost you arround 4,350.000. otherwise it just about personal choice, and if you someday move to studio flash, some of highend powerpack provide build in pocket wizard.

I am agree with you, but what does I mean 1 stop over is based on camera TTL metering, when you shoot in TTL mode, while if I shoot in manual mode and metered with flashmeter it's a different case, average F number could be achive after metered from some angle of the subject. Some people also doesn't need flash meter during using manual studio flash, the desire exposure could be achive after some trial and error shoots and looking at the histogram but I'm not at that level.

[beebop]

I was in the same position as you not so long ago. Changing to full manual exposure allowed me to advance much faster. ETTL is inconsistant and the camera exif doesent let you know what power setting was chosen so you could never learn from it.
An easy way to learn about manual strobe exposure is to eliminate as many factors as possible. I did this by selecting maximum shutter sync speed (1/250 on my camera), base ISO (100 on my camera) and for the aperture i started at f8. In the studio, or just about any indoor situation this will totally cut off the ambient light and your flash will be the ONLY source of exposure.
So now that you have eliminated all camera settings from the equasion, you can now experiment with the strobe/speedlight. I have a canon 430EXii and with the above camera settings i immediately set it to full power with umbrella. The only thing you do now is take a picture and look at it... Too dark? Then move the light closer, too bright then move it back.
The important thing to notice with this lesson is to mentally note the distance you need for the desired effect. If you cant get the distance you need because you are now touching the nose of your subject you will need a more powerful strobe, remove strobe modifier, increase ISO or open up aperture or if you up against the wall with the light (cant move it any more back) then you have to reduce strobe/speedlight power, reduce ISO, close aperture.
After doing it a few times you will get used to it. I recommend you practice with a stuffed toy for a day, you will get it and remember it for life after a days learning. ETTL just leads you running around in circles. After that you can start learning about using flash outdoors in the sun .. I had so much trouble with that until i went manual and realised that the 430EXii is not a powerful enough speedlight.

[83cece83]

eden.jpgI'm a noob, need your guidance here.... would love to hear some inputs from you guys

[El_Goretto]

What a wonderful light! I think the light falling on the vegetation is much more attractive than the light in the sky. I would have included more of the vegetatio in the picture and less of the sky. Also, I would have positioned myself so that the sun sits behind the big tree on the left to bring even more mood to the picture and reduce lens flare. Lovely colors

[El_Goretto]

The title of he picture "Eden" is indeed very appropriate!

[beebop]

eden.jpgI'm a noob, need your guidance here.... would love to hear some inputs from you guys

Very nice! And the advice EG gave would make it even more beautiful. I never tried doing landscapes before because i never really seen anything worthwhile. I should be on the lookout for something.

[83cece83]

@EG : thanks, your advice makes sense... I used that Lumix DMC-LX3, the original is not that good so i had to edit it first
@Beebop : yes, try it yesterday was my first time doing it... thanks to my dad for taking me to the mount before goin back to hectic jakarta hehe this photo was taken at the slopes of mt. sumbing

And here is the original from the previous photo i posted : original.jpg
The question is : is it possible to get a photo like the previous one without any editing? or maybe DSLR does better than this camera?
I'll post the original ones later

[beebop]

Well all jpegs are edits of RAW files. It depends alot on your picture style settings in camera. you could have gotten close enough by adjusting a warmer white ballance and adding a bit more saturation, but in the end the editing software has more versatility to take you to where you want it.
For this particular picture, i dont see how a dslr could have done much differently except if youre going to print it in a large size and look at it closely. A dslr Might have rendered a bit more dynamic range within the sky, but being a sunset it would require multiple blended exposures even on a dslr which is probably why Elgoretto suggested having the sun behind the tree (other than lens flare). It will bring everything withing the cameras dynamic range.

[N.Rio]

83cece83, your camera can shoot in RAW mode, why dont you do it? You have a good camera, but if using it in jpg mode you might as well use your handphone! You used photoshop to edit your photo, did you not, so no problem shooting RAW? The leverage for editing RAW files are soooooo much bigger than editing jpg files...