flagging your bounce flash – vs – simple bounce flash

February 26, 2010

bounce flash photography technique

In many of the articles on the Tangents blog, I’ve described the way that I bounce flash indoors when photographing events. This photo is an example from a recent wedding – the bridesmaids are watching the bride and groom dancing.

The important thing to notice here is that everyone there is evenly lit, whether closer to the camera, or further away. This is achieved by NOT bouncing the flash off the ceiling towards my subject … but rather to flag my flash so that there is no direct flash falling on my subject. And then I bounce my flash off some point equi-distant to everyone. Then the light has the same distance to travel to everyone … and everyone will be evenly illuminated by the flash. NO need for the local correction brush in ACR / Lightroom. It’s all done in camera!

This technique is also very useful when photographing corporate events. You will inevitably have someone closer to the camera – possibly with his back to you. The way then to get everyone equally well exposed, is to bounce off a wall or the ceiling to the side of everyone … in such a way that there is equal amount of light on everyone.

A regular reader of the Tangents website, Alex Perry, works as an event photographer in Washington DC … and he just posted an insightful article about this technique on his blog. With his kind permission, I’m including the illustrative diagrams here. But check out his blog post to see his description of how he uses this at events.

The idea here is that if you bounce flash towards the group using a bounce card or that infamous piece of tupperware … you still have the people closest to you over-exposed compared to the rest of the frame.

In contrast to that, here is what happens when you flag your flash, bouncing your flash ONLY off a surface parallel to everyone in the frame …

Hopefully these diagrams will help in making the concept more clear. Thank you for this excellent contribution, Alex!

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27 Comments »

Superb diagrams Neil. They make it all so easy to understand. Many times seeing things such as diagrams helps me to grasp issues rather than just imagining how they would be. This is particularly important with light and lighting.

Many thanks for this.

PS….the fact that you are on Twitter is great. As soon as your Tweet hits I’m clicking the link and reading your great articles.

Comment by Tom K. — February 26, 2010 @ 6:50 pm
CSI style on neil´s blog.
perfect and great.
thanks a lot for your site :-)
olympus

Comment by olympus_fotograph — February 26, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Your image of the bridesmaids watching the first dance begs the following question: If you are facing the line of bridesmaids, and they are looking at the couple to your left, you must have bounced the light to illuminate their faces off your left shoulder. But where in the world would a nice bright wall be located for this to work? Obviously, the dancing is happening to your left, you can’t bounce it off the newly married couple. And surely there is another line of people next to them as well, so there must be nowhere to bounce? Yes here you have bounced it somewhere?

Comment by David Eisenberg — February 26, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
David .. it’s magic.

I bounced the light off the ceiling .. but not directly overhead from them. I bounced it off the ceiling at a stop equi-distant to them, away from me, to my left.

You have to keep in mind, this is not the most efficient use of flash. I am wasting the major part of my flash’s power by throwing it ‘away’ from my subject. But the light that returns, is sweet indeed.

The most efficient use of flash here would be direct flash. But that’s ugly. I want the light to be pretty. And this is it. In my opinion, this is about as far as you can take on-camera flash in making it not look like on-camera flash.

This kind of technique with the black foamie thing is the closest that I imagine it is possible to make on-camera flash look like off-camera flash.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — February 26, 2010 @ 8:26 pm
Hello Neil,

I had actually the same question like David Eisenberg: “When the bridesmaids are looking toward the dancing couple, how you bounced then the flash? I would assume that the dancefloor is not the smallest place and so the next “available” wall would be quite far away, beside the fact that there is a couple dancing….”
I have this kind of question actually very often when I read your articles and I’m not the only one…But today with the help of Alex Perry’s diagram I understood everything. I know that everything you do for us is more less voluntary and I’m thankful for that. But can I suggest that maybe from time to time you could perhaps provide us, the readers of your blog, with a more visual explanation – as Alex Perry did today. It makes things so much more easy. Especially because one of your core subjects is what direction you bounce the flash of.

Regards
Andreas

Comment by Andreas Schroeder — February 26, 2010 @ 9:24 pm
I would also like to hear the answer to David E’s question. Very intersting

Comment by Joshua — February 26, 2010 @ 9:52 pm
Bouncing off the ceiling works well even on higher than usual ceilings as long as they are white-ish. I usually bump up the ISO a little to compensate.

I’m now thinking… what if one uses the Honl speed snoot as a flag? Its inside is silver so potentially it will help with the bounce by reflecting to the ceiling (or wall) the light that would otherwise be absorbed by the flag.

I’m going to try it at my first opportunity.

Cheers!

Bogdan

Comment by Bogdan — February 26, 2010 @ 9:55 pm
I’ve tried a similar method to using a honl snoot and the issue is that it spreads the light out so much that it won’t go to exactly where you wany it and the light quality will be different than intended.

Sometimes I zoom my flash when bouncing both to get more effective power and also to produce a smaller light source on the ceiling. Consider more than a simple bounce. Consider your flash as the light origin and the wall/ceiling as the source and you can begin to shape that source area based on the light you want to produce. I’ve even used a full snoot when bouncing when I want to produce a harder off camera light source. That eats a lot more power but it works.

Neil, what I loved most about this post is your image’s subject matter. It’s such a simple idea to shoot the wedding party as they watch the first dance, but as a budding wedding tog its something I hadn’t considered doing. I’d love to read a post from you about the types of images you create at a typical wedding that, like this, may not seem so obvious to someone with less experience covering weddings.

Comment by Scott — February 26, 2010 @ 10:50 pm
Neil, Scott brings up something I’ve been wanting to ask. Flash head zoom. I didn’t see it mentioned in the book, but do you leave it at the widest zoom setting or vary it?

The snoot as a flag is also something I’m interested in. I need to quickly change from bouncing to left to right in vertical. It takes too long to move the flag around, but with a flag around the entire flash head, snoot, would solve that. Thoughts?

Thanks,
David

Comment by David Holmes — February 27, 2010 @ 12:31 am
Scott, I do keep my flash-head zoomed to maximum.

I think a full snoot will eat up far too much light. While the idea itself might have merit, I don’t think it is entirely practical.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — February 27, 2010 @ 1:09 am
Another great article Neil! I’ve got a wedding coming up so I will try this method out.

Thanks for sharing :)

Mark.

Comment by Mark Tierney — February 27, 2010 @ 3:52 am
Neil, seeing that diagram reminds me of a question I wanted to ask. If you bounce off the ceiling rather than an adjacent wall there is a risk that you will get panda-eyes as the eyebrows cast shadows over the eyes. A convenient wall is not always available and then I get in a quandry: do I bounce off the ceiling and flag and risk panda-eyes, or do I use a bounce card and risk over-exposure of close subjects. I far prefer the results of flag and bounce off a wall rather than bounce card except when it comes to a bounce off a ceiling.

How do you minimise panda-eyes when using a flag and ceiling bounce?

Comment by Mark Cornwell — February 27, 2010 @ 5:42 am
Mark .. I bounced off the ceiling here, yet don’t get raccoon / panda eyes with my subjects. Read my reply in comment #4. It’s all there. : )

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — February 27, 2010 @ 11:27 am
Neil, the diagrams are very effective, would it be possible for them to be added when you are dong future posts to show how you bounce the light?

PS Just got you book, cant stop reading it, Brilliant! well done

John

Comment by John — February 27, 2010 @ 7:32 pm
John … I would like to, but I also need to spend time on things that actually pay the rent. ; )

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — February 27, 2010 @ 10:33 pm
Another great post and example…

Thanks as usual

Dave T

Comment by David Tong — February 28, 2010 @ 5:53 am
Neil, when you say that you keep your flash-head zoomed to maximum, do you mean 200mm on the SB900, when you use the Black Foamy Thing ?

Comment by Stefan — February 28, 2010 @ 6:05 am
Stefan .. you’re going to have to connect the dots yourself on this one. : )

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — February 28, 2010 @ 6:34 am
Very useful post, and useful complement to the book (which I just finished this afternoon.) Guess I’ll go have to find some black foam now.

Comment by Bart — February 28, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
Dear Neil vN,

I fully understand this posting in your excellent blog.

However, there are just a few issues that I don’t get.

Your excellent technique seems to presuppose that there will always be something to bounce the flash off of, right?

Well, what does one do if, as happened to me on Valentine’s Day (I was shooting as a guest and the shots were my wedding present),(1) you don’t have with you a high powered flash (the flash was GN36 at full 85mm zoom) (2) you don’t have a camera with super duper high ISO ability ( a la Nikon D700 et al ) and (3) wedding is held in a sports hall with super high ceilings?

Luckily for me, the lighting was VERY bright and I used an extremely fast lens (and no flash) but next time I might not be so lucky (the lighting might be poor and I may not have a super fast lens). So what to do?

And what if there is no ceiling? Or the ceiling is not white and you can’t bounce off of walls because folks are in the way?

Then of course there is the PJ issue. PJs tend to shoot JPEG, so how are they gonna cope if they can’t get a white surface to shoot off of?

I don’t mean to sound negative or come across as a naysayer, I am genuinely interested in how to overcome such problems.

Your advice will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Comment by plevyadophy — March 1, 2010 @ 12:47 pm
I get this question frequently on my site … and my answer is invariably the same. You have to adapt your technique and approach. If there is nothing to bounce flash off, then use off-camera lighting. Or bounce flash into a reflector. Something. Or sometimes, we have to accept that there is no other option but to use a measure of direct flash with a clear plastic light modifier.

While much of the material on this site deals with bounce flash, there are many examples of where I used additional lighting of some kind. It’s all there, showing that a flexible approach is necessary.

As for PJ’s refusing to shoot RAW … they have issues that they need to deal with if they want to insist on shooting JPG.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — March 1, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
Neil,
Superb site! Just ordered your book, and this AM picked up the black foam for my flash.
Question: It seems to me that your excellent technique will push the ISO setting to the max, in many situations. (I have a Canon 50D, and 580EXII, and have found that I can shoot at ISOs of 1600 and 3200, but ONLY if I use Noiseware Professional, which is a separate plug-in for Photoshop) I haven’t as yet found any posts on your site that discuss the various noise-reduction techniques that I think would be an integral part of your approach. Am I wrong??
Jack

Comment by Jack — March 1, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
In response to the last post (Jack’s), I think Neil’s latest post (the new Nikon lens) illustrates Canon’s approach to noise in higher ISO’s…they don’t really have one (haven’t seen any pix of the new 7D, with 12500 ISO, but imagine it can’t be that great?). I too am a Canon user (5D and 580EXII) and can’t really justify shooting anything higher than 1250 ISO without flash; the noise is just too great. With flash, I’ll go as high as 1600 but 3200 sucks, especially with black tonalities (like tuxedos).
How is Noiseware Pro? I’ve used Nik Dfine2 software and it does the job, but it seems to blur the image in order to do so.

Comment by Photomatte — March 1, 2010 @ 10:07 pm
Thanks Neil!
Great Stuff, I can’t wait to put it to use.

Comment by Nathaniel Vigeant — March 2, 2010 @ 2:39 am
Neil
I need to say you captured the moment, the four brides maids are in wedding heaven
Dream land Nice shot!
I have been using your tech. now for months with great results I need work on the spontinuity timing. ( it takes me a moment to think thur the shot and follow thur)
But very pleased.
I use the sb800 and d200 still, and find on a shot like this I need to push my flash up to 2.5 and 3 sometimes is this normally the case?
All and all getting the shot like this is what its about. Great feeling in this one.
John

Comment by John — March 2, 2010 @ 10:32 am
John .. try going to TTL instead of TTL BL mode then, and see how this influences the amount of FEC you need to dial in.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — March 15, 2010 @ 3:30 am
Very cool website! I am so glad I found you. It must’ve been one of the fliers I picked up at WPPI.

Comment by Anna Kim Photography — April 2, 2010 @ 11:24 pm