Photo Tips

Flash photography

For indoor shots of people:
Use the 550EX/580EX flash and angle the flash head upwards 60 degrees to bounce the flash off the ceiling which greatly reduces the blown-out look you sometimes get with direct or on-board flash. If the ceiling is too high use the Stofen omnibounce and only angle the head up a little. I don't use P mode for flash, it sets the shutter speed to 1/60 which is a bit slow. Don't use A mode because it makes the shutter speed way too long (for details see http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash). I use M mode, set the shutter speed to 1/160. Set the aperture to F6.3. After each shot check the histogram (turn this on in the menus to automatically display) to make sure you're not over or under exposing (see Understanding Histograms below). If the picture is underexposed I'll dial in some positive flash exposure compensation (FEC) and reshoot. Typically, just leaving the FEC at +1/3 produces good results when shooting with the digital rebel/300D. If you have the Stofen on you'll need to add about +1 FEC. If you get too close to a person the flash will tend to overexpose so I dial in some negative FEC or angle the flash head higher. You can change the FEC on the digital rebel/300D, but you need the "hacked" firmware to enable (or adjust on the 550EX flash). I set the camera to use the center focus point only and typically focus on the person's eyes, then recompose the shot. If you're using a large aperture like F2.8 don't recompose after focusing as your subject may be out of  focus, depending on the camera to subject distance. I sometimes vary the aperture to F7.1 or F8 to get a little more depth of field if more people are in the picture, or go lower (numerically) for less DOF.

For macros (bees, etc.):
Increase the shutter speed to 1/200 to freeze motion; change the aperture to F11-F16 to increase the DOF; lower the 500EX flash head all the way down. An external flash is pretty much required for good macro shots. I frequently set the lens to manual focus mode and slightly move the camera back and forth to achieve focus. A good macro lens really helps, I use the Canon 100mm 2.8.

Misc Tips

Digital Rebel/300D owners should check out http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digital-rebel-tricks.html for tips and where you can also download the "hacked" firmware.  I highly recommend the hacked firmware as it unlocks many hidden features! It lets you set the focus mode to "one shot", which lets you focus and recompose w/o the camera trying to refocus.

I always set the white balance on the camera to the current conditions using the presets (sunny, cloudy, etc) instead of relying on the auto white balance.

I use the histogram to make sure I don't blow out clouds (or anything important). This is key to getting good exposures. Once you blow out something you can't recover it in post processing. I bracket exposures to ensure that I get at least one properly exposed. I rarely combine the bracketed shots in Photoshop because it's a pain. But here is one where I combined a 4 sec exposure (for the dome) and 8 sec exposure (rest of image):