By Jim Zuckerman
I recently took my first vacation since 1972. That may sound strange, since I travel to exotic destinations so often, but these trips aren’t vacations. They are hard work, and even though I love the experiences, I wear myself out looking for great pictures. In fact, I come home to relax. So, my wife suggested that I we actually go on a relaxing vacation, and she wanted to go on a cruise. She spent four months on the Internet looking for a good deal, and we finally chose the southern Caribbean on the Crown Princess. It was truly an enjoyable experience. I was somewhat frustrated photographically speaking because every island we visited was during the middle of the day, but it was fun to be on such a huge ship with awesome service, awesome food, and a wonderful environment.
On one of the two formal evenings on the ship, I wanted to photograph my wife in a dress that she had designed on the elegant mid-ships staircase. To balance the on-camera flash with the artfully done ambient lighting, I took a light reading of the background on Program exposure mode and got 1/25 at f/4.5 using 400 ISO. I then switched to manual exposure mode, set my shutter speed and lens aperture according to that reading, and then I set my flash on ETTL. The first picture I took was good, but I felt that the light on my wife was a bit bright for the background. I then used the exposure compensation feature on my Canon 580EX flash and reduced the exposure by – 2/3 f/stop. The picture you see here is the result. The invaluable feedback on the LCD monitor allowed me to make these 'on the fly' decisions. In the past, when I shot film, the exposure calculation would have been done with a hand held light meter. I would have arrived at the same results, but it would have taken longer and, to be honest, it would have required more experience and more technical know-how.
I used a daylight white balance so the light from the flash was correctly colored, and you can see that the tungsten lights look warm, or yellowish, which I like. I used a 50mm normal lens on the Canon IDs Mark II.
Wonderful photo. However at f/4.5 & 1/25 s - I'm wondering how you achieved no blur and adequate DOF w/o increasing ISO? You don't mention a tripod.
Posted by: Ernie | December 07, 2007 at 10:18 AM