BetterPhoto Member |
Lighting and Red Eye I have a Canon Rebel X with built-in flash. Whenever I take photos of children I get red eye, which I know is a result of the flash hitting the retina. I purchased some flood lights hoping to eliminate this problem but they don't seem to offer enough light, and cast shadows and a yellow tint onto the photographs. Should I use stronger bulbs in the flood lights? (currently 250 and 500). Also, would using a flash on the shoe eliminate red eye or would the problem still persist? Also how do I place the flood lights to eliminate shadows?
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John A. Lind |
Darlene, There are three parts in your question, red-eye, color temperature of your lighting, and lamp placement. Red-eye: Color Temperature: Lamp placement is an art. In general they should be above your camera level by about a foot or so. This can vary with your camera height and subject height, but never below the camera height (unless you want some real special effects)! The idea is to get deep shadows to fall down behind the subject where the camera will not see them. Beyond that, you can work with all manner of placement. One method is to use them equally on your left and right by several feet, just behind you. Another is to place one (out of the frame) to the side of the subject and another behind you as before on the other side. Even with dual lamps, you still may see two shadows, one on each side. Even with floods, you may still see sharp edges to the shadows, as they are direct lighting and not diffused. You can try bouncing the light from the stronger one off of the ceiling onto the subject and filling in shadows with the weaker one. However, if your ceiling isn't white (or nearly white) it will pick up a color cast of the ceiling color. Be careful with the floods. The wattages you are using generate a lot of heat. There are special floodlamps for growing plants that are close to daylight balance. I don't recommend them. They get much, much hotter than a normal flood of equal wattage, and can only be used in ceramic sockets that will not melt or burn (NOT plastic or bakelite). They are not made for photo use and your results could vary wildly with them. -- John
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