Single Flash Outdoors At Dusk

[rpcrowe]

550EX pointed straight up bounced into a Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro with FlipIt portion tilted forward at 45 degrees.. Backlit by the sun which had set below the horizon.

[Geoff F]

Works well for me, Richard.

In the first shot the model is possibly looking a little pensive but that may have been what was required.

[speedneeder]

More great photos
Is your DOF that shallow, or are you blurring things in post?

Thanks

[rpcrowe]

I did not do any PP blurring on these. I shot wide open on mt 70-200mm f/4L IS lens at 169mm

[speedneeder]

I love that lens - especially at F4. I shoot most portraits between F5.6 and F11 though.
You captured her eyes wonderfully
The first photo looks a tad dark to me, though that may have been exactly what you wanted.

[rpcrowe]

I am wondering if my monitor is not showing the images lighter than they actually are... I have been using a Huey Pro to calibrate the monitor and it is calibrated just great for my printer. However, most images from other folks look good on my monitor

[speedneeder]

Richard, I don't think is anything is wrong, and the thing that is probably out of calibration is me
I think I tend to overexpose things a tad.

[rpcrowe]

"I love that lens (the 70-200mm f/4L IS) - especially at F4. I shoot most portraits between F5.6 and F11 though."

I would venture to say that the 70-200mm f/4L IS lens is my favorite of all my lenses. I use it for virtually everything I shoot, people, dogs, landscapes... EVERYTHING. It is an all around lens for me and I can carry the f/4L IS + an extra 1.6x camera on which it is mounted at the same weight as the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 (series) lens alone. A nice thing about the f/4L IS lens is that it is sharp wide open and it produces very smooth bokeh.

I also shoot many of my portraits between f/5.6 - f/11. However, I will not hesitate to shoot at f/4 when I want to take advantage of a narrow DOF. In this case, I wanted to ensure that the BG was out of focus. Being confident of shooting wide open mitigates the somewhat slow (f/4) maximum aperture. There are some f/2.8 lenses which are only sharp at f/4 and smaller.

Here is an example of shooting wide open for narrow DOF... If I had shot at f/8-f/11 I would have had a very busy background. If I had used a higher shutter speed, I would have had a completely black BG which I didn't really want. I am not terribly keen on this image so I didn't do any PP but. I posted it simply because it shows the narrow DOF with the background OOF and plaesing to me) bokeh.



The background would have been quite busy at a smaller f/stop. The light was changing rapidly, so I used aperture priority exposure.

[speedneeder]

Thanks for your reply Rihard, I appreciate the insight.