C&C my battle with the sun and a small strobe

Here are a few pics I took for a organization at San Diego State. I've never tried doing this before, any help would be great! I had one hell of a time focusing with the sun in the viewfinder, and flare was a huge problem.

nice photos

query:
how much damage can you cause to your sensor by exposing it to direct sunlight?
surely you shouldn't do it for too long or at all?!

--
http://www.romant.net/
I like cake

Ken,

tha pics IMHO, turned out awesome. The sun adds a nice touch. BUt I am sure you posted those that turned out and the question is for those that did not turn out as well as you would have liked.

So with that said:

If you want to try and get some of that flare out of the pic maybe a gobo might work and reposition yourself a bit left of where you were standing in the shots you posted to get the sun out of the pic.

Or play around with a quicker shutter speed/smaller F-stop

Have fun and us know if you get results you like ant what you did to achieve them.

I like all these except for the first image which seems a tad overexposed. I like that look on the second image!
Thanks
Joel
--



http://www.Joel-Canada.smugmug.com

Well done. Really nice set of photos.

My biggest quibble is with the leaping photo (which is also my favorite) where it seems the flash was aimed too low -- more at her tummy than her face. For now a bit of post-processing would probably fix that.

As far as working into the sun, remember you can damage your eye looking at the sun through a camera. (To answer the post above, it is very unlikely you would damage the sensor on a DSLR as it is behind the mirror and shutter except for the moment of exposure.) If possible I would pre-focus and lock in without the sun in the frame, then shift to the final composition. Flare is always an issue, you just have to hope it works out, else or put in the extra post-processing time to get rid of it.

Keep up the good work.

--
W.Mann