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Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Camera Settings for the Gary Fong WhaleTail Light Diffuser

I got this email over the Labor Day Weekend.

It occured to me that other might have a similar question, so I made a quick video.

The Question:

I was checking on your site for settings and suggestions for owners of the Whaletail and a Canon 400D (XTi). I recently received my Whaletail and am enjoying playing around with it; but I am experiencing some lighting issues. I own two lenses. One is the Canon 1.8 50mm and the other is the Canon 17-85 EF-S f4-5.6.

The manual states to put the camera on Aperture Priority and set the F-Stop from 2.8 to 4.0, with an ISO of 400 to 800. Problem is that only one of my two lenses even goes that low, and that's my 50mm. I'm also noticing that my camera, even on program mode, dips below a flash shutter speed of 1/60.

This means I get a bit of blur, sometimes a lot of blur. I'm sure most of the purchasers of this product are professionals and have fully professional equipment. I'm still learning my XTi and I know it isn't professional grade and neither is my 17-85mm lens. yet, I have a suspicion there is a way to make this all work right even with my limited equipment.

Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks! Kelly

The Answer:

1 comment:

  1. Okay, in all my years of using electronics products, that's the first time someone created a video to answer my question; much less slap it on the internet to help anyone else with the same question. Pretty amazing. Worth the price of admission.

    I haven't had a chance to try your suggestions, but will give them a whirl this weekend. I'm excited to see how it works.

    Yes, when you said "ISO 800" I did think... wow.. and when you said "1/30 sec", I again said... wow... but your explanations make sense to me.

    My Set-Up:
    Canon Xti (400D)
    Canon 430EX Flash
    Canon 50mm 1.8
    Canon 17-85mm 4-5.6
    PowerBook 15" 1.67
    Aperture 1.5

    ReplyDelete