Subject:	The equipment used
Author:	Javier
Date:	2/28/2002 6:30:15 AM
Message:

I am using a Canon eos50e camera (I think it is also called elanIIe) with either Canon 50mm f/1.4 or 28-80 f/4.5-f/5.6.
The housing is from Ikelite with a dome port and Ikelite Ai strobe.
By the way, the guys from Ikelite recommended me to use a dome port. However, I don't like to use a +4 close up lens. I think it reduces photo quality. I can't prove it, but I think it increases the "BLAH" zone (I've read about it in Dave's site) and decreases color contrast, focus sharpness, etc.
Is it possible that I can use a flat port behind the lenses I am using (and get rid of the close up lens)?

The film I used: two rolls of regular Kodak 100 ASA and one roll of Fuji velvia (I think it is 50 ASA).
When I looked at the results, I saw that many slides came with very dark background, whereas the color prints came mostly with better background exposure. The only reason I can think for this is the following:
I assumed that for a beginner, it is better to try "A" mode, so that's what I used. I tried to take pictures at different apertures, usually f/5.6 or f/8. However, I had (by mistake) a custom function of the camera that sets the flash sync speed always at 1/125. So if the conditions were OK for f/5.6 and 1/125 the background came properly exposed. Perhaps in the slides it wasn't enough, even if I opened more the aperture so only the strobe made good exposure.
By the way, I used spot-metering allways on the subject. Now, I think that in order to determine the background exposure separately, it was better either to spot-meter the background or at least make an average metering of the whole scene. And of course, to allow the camera to choose any sync speed that is OK with the aperture that I choose.

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