Comments on: more subtle fill-flash with your Nikon speedlight

By: Neil vN

Neil vN — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:32:41 +0000

Alan .. a good topic! We’ll add it to the list of future topics on the Tangents blog.

Neil vN

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:43:32 +0000

Hi there some advice on when shooting into the sun with portraits of people, on achieving correct exposure and flash setting on SB900, Thanks.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:22:26 +0000

Jeff .. I’m not sure how the D700 would compare to the D3 here specifically, but I suspect it would behave the same. The difference would come in if you used the SB-800 .. then the behavior is different.

I don’t have a D700 at the moment to make any useful comparisons.

Neil vN

By: Jeff Ellis

Jeff Ellis — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:37:49 +0000

Hey Neil,
Great thread. Also follow your input on DWF.
Wondering if the settings you use here- your default – will yield the same results with the D700? It’s the same sensor isn’t it? Or have you found that the 700 actually give visible differences with the same settings / exposure?

I tend to use the flash much like you do – decide how much ambient I want and bring the flash up to where I want it. I always have the camera in manual mode – except in fast moving bright sunlight situations.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:07:55 +0000

Sose .. I just keep it to the defaults. I have seen other photographer control their flash-head’s zoom setting to great effect when bouncing flash, but I haven’t yet explored that particular avenue.

Neil vN

By: Sose

Sose — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:36:13 +0000

With the SB900 you can choose the flash width + zoom mm. When you bounce flash, what do you set these to?

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:54:07 +0000

Hi there Eric …

As I mentioned in the companion post to this one ..

I use Bridge CS4 / ACR and specifically Adobe’s Beta Portrait 2 profile for the D3. I really like the skin tones that I get with that profile with the Calibrate settings all zero’d out.

But I also bump up the Contrast, Brightness and the Clarity (Local Contrast) a bit. But I am careful with the Clarity setting, since with portraits, you can very easily veer into faux-Dave-Hill territory with some ugly artifacts in the skin areas.

The Saturation is bumped up a little bit, but I push the Vibrance a bit higher. Vibrance will give your images deeper colors, without affecting skin tones as much as Saturation does.

Here are my current Default settings in Bridge / ACR for the Nikon D3:

Recovery: 5
Fill Light: 5
Blacks: 5
Brightness: +50
Contrast: +55
Clarity: +10
Vibrance: +20
Saturation: +5

And that’s about it .. but I do play with these settings for individual images. Also, the default isn’t just a one-time setting up of it whatever the default is, but a continually changing to get me to what I feel is the best overall Default setting.

My sharpening is at whatever the basic default is for ACR. I do sharpen my image for web when I post here. But once again, it is a simple method .. I use Smart Sharpen in Photoshop.

Neil vN

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:16:21 +0000

Hi Neil!
First of all, the photo and the model are really beautifull. Nice makup, mood, etc…
What about the Raw developement? With ACR, I suppose?
What are your settings? Contrast? Saturation? Color T°?
The photo looks sharp, did you use clarity ?

By: olympus_fotograph

olympus_fotograph — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:59:08 +0000

thanks for your explanations.
i´m looking fwd to your next blog post.
canon vs. nikon*g*
with my olympus system i have the choice between
1) flash coupled with exposure comp.
or
2) flash separatly “FEC” and separatly Exposure Compensation.
but only (of course ) when shooting in mode “A”, “S” or “P”.
also the display will change e.g when i dial down in lets say “A” mode.
you will also see a change of points of the FEC.
normaly i shoot in “M”- mode.
so my setting is
2) flash not coupled , means i use FEC for its own and normal EC is done via shutter or aperture (to go up or down with the exposure)
a bit tricky is the “starting point” of -FEC, to estimate the correct amount or power of Flash.
grts
peter

By: Gene

Gene — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:25:11 +0000

I was just thinking that you have one other possible alternative to try and that would be to set the flash ( SB800 & SB900 only ) to AA or auto mode to have the flash meter for the subject separately from the camera meter. It would be interesting to see if the SB900 exposure is still on the high side.

I think this can be done????