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Tangents

choosing your direction

January 16, 2008

specifically choosing your direction of bounce flash

The reason why I want (if possible) only indirect light from my on-camera flash, is that any direct flash looks too harsh.

Here’s a typical example:
As you can see, using the Stofen helps to disperse some light and is a huge step up from direct flash.  But you can also see in the entire frame that the light from top to bottom is uneven.  In the close-up you can see how there is a hard shadow on the bride’s face, as well as some specular reflection on her skin from the flash directly from the Stofen.  And in some way, any time there is flash directly from the flash modifier on your subject, you get this kind of light.  It is inevitable. 

On the right-hand side images, I simply took the Stofen off, and pointed the flash over my shoulder into the rest of the hallway.  As you can clearly see, having only indirect light from the flashgun, completely changes the look of the image.

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Remember :  any time your subject can see your flash-tube you have direct flash.

This implies that if you are ”bouncing” flash with the flash set to 45′ upwards, you’re not doing anything to improve your flash photography.
There are  occasional times to do that with specific intent, but mostly it just gives bad results.

The key idea here is that bouncing your flash does not mean simply putting a flash modifier on your flashgun and pointing it at the ceiling.

As to why I prefer not to bounce from the ceiling -  in a studio set-up you would most likely never set up a soft-box directly over someone’s head as the only light-source. Similarly, why would you want to bounce flash from above someone, if there are walls and other surfaces around to bounce from ? Pointing the flashgun upwards is a poor choice compared to other possibilities when shooting indoors.

It is with this approach that I want to specifically choose where I want my light to come from.

There are times I do want to throw light forward from my flashgun.
But this is a specific choice, whether a short-cut or a specifically intended thing, or just a limitation of the scenario I am working in.

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this is going to hurt you more ..

January 11, 2008

.. than it will hurt me.

The obvious question that comes up when people see how I use flash when I am using them as on-camera flashguns, is … don’t they take a beating or even burn out?

I do hammer my speedlights, especially when I use the Quantum 2×2 battery packs.  This doesn’t bother me greatly, since I regard my speedlights in a way, as consumable items. They will become unrepairable at some point. No real problem for me.

For this reason I have numerous speedlights, because there are inevitably at least one or two in for repairs.

My older speedlights tend to look like this:

Where they take a hard beating, is with events where there is a lot of activity in a short time.  For example, with Jewish weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, you have events like the Hora which happen very fast  and only for a short time.  And you have to get the shots. The equipment matters less.  Don’t fall in love with your equipment and be afraid to use it.

This example is from a recent wedding. My on-camera flash was used in the way I described recently in the posting on my choice of flash modifiers.
(btw, that’s a Q-flash lighting up the background there.)

Getting these images as sequences in the dark reception halls here on the East Coast, takes a lot of juice. (Or rather, the way I do it, requires a lot of juice.)

And no, I wouldn’t buy a used flashgun from me either. ;)

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using bounce flash outdoors

January 3, 2008

using bounce flash outdoors

While the techniques described on these pages are heavily dependent on shooting indoors which provide places to bounce flash off … it wouldn’t seem possible to use these techniques outdoors.  After all, you can’t bounce flash off the clouds.  (Although we’ve all seen photographers attempt this outside. ;) )

So while there are obvious limitations in applying these bounce flash techniques outdoors, there are times when these techniques can still be quite effective.

As a start, an example that I show in the tutorial pages is of this image taken at a wedding that I photographed in Aruba.

Here I had my daughter hold up the gold side of the Lastolite reflector. And hopefully this gives the idea of light from the sun setting over the ocean. (It had just gone down, and the light was blandly grey.)

However, these bounce flash techniques do imply some kind of surface to bounce your flash off.  But you shouldn’t feel limited by not having an obvious area to bounce light off.  Have a look at this sequence:

Nice evening light:
Settings of  .. 1/125th @ f2 @ 1000 ISO .. exposed properly for skin tones and the dress.
BUT, the evening sky and the light from the lamp are lost.


1/250th @ f2 @ 320 ISO …
Nice enough detail in the sky and the lamppost, but the couple is lost in murkiness.

So this is (for me anyway), the kind of opportunity where a touch of flash would work wonders.
So I turned my flash-head 90′ to my left, and bounced light into the shop displays.
Not any particular surface .. just off the general shop displays.

And here are the results, still at 1/250th @ f2 @ 320 ISO.

It works for me, and I know my client will love it when she sees it.

To show you exactly what I was bouncing light from, have a look at the shop displays to the left in this test shot:

… and this crop from another test shot:

Yup, I bounced flash off that stuff.  Nothing in particular .. but, enough light will spill back from whatever is struck by the light from my flashgun .. to give enough light on my couple to enhance the photo.

Here’s another example :

It was really dark already. This was at 1/100th @ f1.2 @ 1250 ISO
Canon 5D and 85mm f1.2 II
I was really squeezing the last bit of light out of the setting we were in.  I wanted to use the tree behind them with the last remaining autumn leaves, but the evening light was also coming from behind them.  So their faces were shaded. Not good.

I therefore bounced flash off the brick wall of the temple.  I’d guess it was about 10 meters from where I was standing.  But enough light spilled back to register at that wide an aperture and high an iso.  Because the light from the flash is now coming in from an angle, the foreground doesn’t have that typical on-camera flash look to it.

Here’s another image from the same sequence.
(I did edit this though for the dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep. )

But in this example and the previous one that I show here, I got lucky.
There was some kind of surface or objects nearby to bounce light off.

So, would these techniques work outside ?
Maybe.  Quite often not, but sometimes it will. It depends.
It will require some thought.

If you found this and other articles valuable, then using these affiliate links to order equipment & any other goodies, would be a welcome way of helping towards the cost of hosting this site.
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juggling those three balls …

… aperture / shutter speed / ISO

Those are the three controls we have over our exposure of ambient light.
But depending on whether we are using manual flash or TTL flash, our control over our flash (in relation to our ambient light), changes somewhat.

To recap quickly from the previous posting where I went over the differences between manual flash, and TTL flash.

With manual flash,  two (of the four) things that control our exposure:
 - aperture,
 - ISO.

With TTL flash,  we have only one control over our flash exposure:
 - flash exposure compensation.

The reason for this, as explained is that our two controls that affect manual flash, seemingly become transparent with TTL flash.  And therefore we have to control TTL flash exposure with flash exposure compensation.  The flip-side of this is … that we can now use aperture and ISO to affect our ambient exposure.  This we couldn’t do with manual flash, because it would’ve affected our flash exposure as well, and not just our ambient exposure.

The point of this posting? 
It’s just a correction to a lot of the mistaken advice I’ve seen on the photography forums,
where incorrect advice is given,  such as:

 - aperture doesn’t affect ambient exposure. 
Yikes!  Just because shutter speed is the only independent control you have over ambient exposure when using manual flash, doesn’t mean that aperture doesn’t affect ambient exposure.

- your choice of aperture affects flash exposure. 
Weeeell, it could be.   As we’ve seen, this depends on whether you’re using manual flash or TTL flash.  If you’re using TTL flash, you could use aperture to affect only your ambient exposure. ie .. you could affect your ambient-vs-flash ratio by controlling your aperture. (The same goes for your ISO setting.)

This and the previous posting have been very wordy, so perhaps it is time for some photos again …

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