Canon 430EX II Speedlite

Canon XS 1-on-1 indoor light DSLR Photography Lesson with Suzanne St. Petersburg Florida

Suzanne relaxing after we finished our fourth 2-hour DSLR photography lesson together!When Suzanne bought her 4-pack of 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons in October of last year, I did not imagine we would only have the fourth one now in June!  This, though, has allowed her to add a valuable new piece of equipment to her gear bag, a Canon 430EX II Speelite which she wanted to learn to use in indoor settings.  For that I have brought students to Tyrone Mall in the past, however, this time may have been the last time possible for it as we first got kicked out of Sears then later (thankfully at the end of the lesson) from the entire mall itself!  In my times there before no one has said anything to me.  Still, we were able to practice all I wanted to show Suzanne with regards to using the directional, or bounce, abilities of her external flash.  

We even found a closed store that had tall, black velvet drapes blocking its entrance that made for a studio-like background.  After that we used a nook hidden in a hallway to see how bouncing the light off a rear wall, a side wall and straight ahead effects light on the subject (in this case me!).  I pointed out that having shadows on the face of the subject is not always bad and the headshot practice we did should hopefully allow her to make a better one of her brother-in-law, that is if he does not take advantage of my own $99 headshot service!

I enjoyed my lessons with Suzanne and perhaps we will meet again for more advanced off camera flash and digital photograph editing lessons!

Canon 7D 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in St. Petersburg Florida with Jess

Jess with her Canon 7D and 24-105mm lens in North Straub Park during our DSLR photography lessonOn an overcast evening in downtown St. Petersburg I met Jess with her Canon 7D for our first 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson.  She has taken group photography lessons before with a local photography organization, so she had pretty good knowledge of basic photography terms and ideas.  It's just that those group classroom classes suffer from one serious flaw - you do not actually get out and shoot with the instructor.  To me it's like taking a piano lesson, but not playing the piano during the lesson!  

So during our 2-hour lesson all out in the field with our cameras on, I helped Jess organize the knowledge she already had while showing her how aperture, shutter speed and ISO relate to each other when shooting in manual mode.  Before the lesson she had mentioned issues with getting in focus shots, so I made sure to switch her 7D from the awful auto-point selection to the very reliable single, center focus point method I use and trust myself, even though my own Nikon D300 has an available 51-point autofocus option.  

We ended with using her Canon 430EX II Speedlite for a brief intro to flash portrait making.  I even showed her how to use her Canon 7D to trigger the speedlite off camera using the built in lighting system with the pop-up flash!  After a very info packed 2-hours Jess now has a lot of new knowledge to use when photographing her baby son!

DSLR Photography Lesson with Deb & her new 430EX II Speedlite

Deb wielding her substantial Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens - photo: Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1/320th Strobist: Nikon SB-600 Speedlight held off camera triggered by commander mode

Once again my week started off with a fun DSLR Photography Lesson with Deb (lesson #1) in downtown St. Petersburg.  In the past week she got some new photography gear in the form of a Canon 430EX II Speedlite, which I suggested to her during our first lesson as the best piece of gear to get next, as speedlights are extremely useful.  She even got a bounce cap too, also very useful.  

We started out shooting in the shade of one of the downtown condo towers to escape the heat and also because shade is better for making portraits.  The first flash shots we took were practicing bouncing the flash off of available walls.  Ideally there would be a nice, smooth white wall everywhere you happened to decide to make a portrait, however, one often has to make due with much less.  Still, in a few quick test shots I was able to demonstrate to Deb that even bouncing the light from her 430EX II off a rough, dark creme wall was better than pointing the light straight at me.  She was able to do this because the 430EX II has a swivel head allowing her to point the light of the flash in a different direction than her lens.  On camera flash does not allow one to do this.  Hence, an external flash, even used on camera, has a great advantage over the built-in pop-up flash.

Sometimes there are not any walls around so we even practiced for that before finishing with making a portrait in direct sunlight, perhaps the least ideal situation.  However, using my tried and true settings (see photo description) serviceable broad daylight portraits are possible, when necessary.

Next lesson we will be getting the flash off of Deb's 7D and out on its own for off camera flash to produce even better portrait results.  Deb is learning fast!

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