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May 10, 2012
TTL flash for the simplicity and speed
Okay, true strobists might recoil in horror, but I often prefer using TTL flash to sweeten an image when shooting on location. I just get to the final image faster than if I had gone the more methodical route of manual flash.
For some situations, manual flash is the only way to go. For example, when your subject is static in relation to your lights and you have to get consistent lighting, image after image, then manual flash makes the most sense. But for times where you want to shoot faster, and shoot on the run, I find that TTL flash is the easiest and most fun option for me.
This image of Aleona was from a recent individual photography workshop in New York. As a starting point in explaining how to balance flash and ambient light, we initially work with an easy scenario where the available light isn’t harsh, but also not all that exciting. Now we can easily finesse it with a bit of flash from a softbox …
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April 11, 2012
photographing in bright sunlight – find the shade!
Hard sunlight must be one of the most difficult lighting scenarios to work under. But with a bit of thought, we can work around it and still easily get photos that look great. It’s a topic that we’ve touched on a number of times on the Tangents blog, (see related articles at the end here). The simplest approach for me though, is where I can, is to just not deal with the hard sunlight. I find shade.
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March 15, 2012
I’m always very happy to feature Chuck Arlund as a guest on Tangents. Anyone who knows Chuck in person will tell you about the crazy energy he has, (a good kinda crazy), and how inspiring and innovative he is in his lighting.
Check his work on his website, and on his Facebook page for senior photography.
Chuck is presenting an intensive 2-day workshop in New York – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Light. (There’s even mention of a bonus 3rd day!) The fee for the workshop is $750 … but for photographers following the Tangents blog, there is an incredible $250 discount code: NEILVN which brings the fee for the workshop down to $500. Incredible value for anyone wanting to learn more about lighting.
lighting patterns in photography
by Chuck Arlund, Kansas City photographer
Back to basics. When shooting a portrait or any person for that matter it is good to understand some light patterns to help determine what kind of mood you would like to create.
Basically there are 6 light patterns.
- Butterfly / Paramount
- Loop
- Rembrandt
- Split
- Monster
- Profile
So why do I need to know these? It’s not necessarily knowing them but being able to recognize them will help educate yourself on how a photograph was lit if you are trying to learn lighting. It also can help to know exactly what you are looking to create in your own photograph.
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March 8, 2012
using the guide number of your flash to determine flash exposure
GN = distance * f-stop
Your flash’s Guide Number (GN) is determined at 100 ISO, when it gives correct exposure at a certain distance, multiplied by the f-stop
The idea that we can figure out the manual flash exposure by the combination of distance and aperture (for a given ISO setting), was covered in these recent topics:
- getting the most out of your flash / speedlite / speedlight
- practical tutorial: controls for manual flash exposure
In these articles, we relied on the display on the back of the speedlight to show us the distance we need to hold the flash from our subject. A flashmeter / lightmeter would’ve given us a similar answer. (There might be a discrepancy, since the manufacturers tend to be a little bit optimistic about what the flashgun is capable of.)
Now, the question is, what do we do if our speedlights don’t show the distance / aperture relationship on its display, or if we don’t have a lightmeter on hand?
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March 4, 2012
getting the most power from of your flash / speedlite / speedlight
This might be obvious, but the most power (or light) that you’re going to get from your flash, is at full output in manual. Then the flash dumps everything it has. Full power. You could of course zoom your flash-head a little tighter and get more power / range, but essentially, you’re at the limit.
This is useful to know when you’re balancing flash with bright sunlight. With this portrait of Shawna, out on the Las Vegas strip, I wanted that sun-flare look … but I also wanted to balance the super-bright background with flash.
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December 27, 2011
observing & using the available light, and maybe adding a little bit of flash (model – Alex)
When working with available light or flash or video light or any kind of additional light, the most important aspect of the light is the direction of the light. We need to take a moment and observe the light. Where do the light sources come from? What is the quality of the light?
This motif of looking at the available light has been a recurring theme here with various articles on the topic. Using this simple portrait of Alex, our model with a recent individual workshop, let’s look at a sequence of photos showing some of the thought process ..
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December 22, 2011
off-camera flash photography tip – find your background, then your settings
With flash photography on location, we nearly always start off by figuring out what we want to do in relation to our available light. We might just need fill-flash, or or flash might need to do the “heavy lifting” and expose correctly for our subject in relation to the available light.
When we have our subject in (relative) shade, and need to figure out our flash exposure, we also need to decide exactly what our background is. It usually works best to be specific about our background … and how we position ourselves and our subject in relation to that.
So let’s run through that thought-process, using the image at the top. Alex was our delightful model today during an individual workshop in Manhattan.
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November 23, 2011
flash photography technique – turning day into night
During the photo session with a couple, Laura & Todd, I wanted to add some variety to the images from the urban setting we were in. The sky had been overcast, but started to clear later on, leaving wispy clouds. Just perfect for a dramatic sky as the background. Of course, it is impossible to get your subject AND a bright sky equally well exposed without resorting to graduated filters or additional lighting, ie, flash. The technique with off-camera flash is quite straight-forward …
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October 12, 2011
example: direct off-camera flash vs softbox (model: Ulorin Vex)
Ulorin Vex posing for us during part of the on-location session of the flash photography workshops which I presented in San Francisco earlier this year. Ulorin Vex is of course absolutely stunning, as always. While I often direct models how they should pose, this one is all her doing . Not even I can improve on that.
The image here at the top was shot with an off-camera softbox – my usual preferred Lastolite Ezybox softbox. The direction of the light here should immediately reveal the approximate position where the light was positioned. Just as comparison, we removed the two baffles of the Lastolite, to see how direct off-camera flash would compare. We kept the softbox hull in place, so it did help contain the spread of light a bit. As you’d expect, the results look more dramatic.
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October 3, 2011
The photo above is of Hannah, one of our models at the workshops in Dublin, Ireland. The lighting is off-camera flash via a softbox to camera left, held up on a monopod. In this instance we used TTL flash with Radio Poppers. TTL flash makes it easy to get to great (or close to great) flash exposure immediately. But for consistency, manual flash is usually the best option.
With manual flash, there are the 4 controls for manual flash exposure:
(We should know this off by heart.)
- distance from your light source to your subject
- power of your flash (including diffusion of your light)
- aperture
- ISO
Now, in an explanation – whether in a written description like this, or with me waving my hands around in wild semaphore fashion – it all easily makes academic sense why the 4 controls would affect manual flash exposure. For example, it just makes intuitive sense that if you bring your light source closer, you get more light on your subject … and would have to adjust one or more of the other controls: exposure, ISO and power. You move the light further away, and then you get less light. But while we might academically understand how the individual controls affect manual flash exposure, it might not immediately make sense in an “oh, yes of course, I get it!” way how the 4 controls are inter-related.
practical tutorial: manual flash – distance, power, ISO & aperture
In explaining all this during flash photography workshops, I felt that the connection between those 4 controls didn’t immediately interlink in people’s mind. It needed a more direct explanation to get to that aha! moment that is necessary for it all to make sense. And to help with that, we work through a hypothetical scenario, camera in hand … and then see how it all connects.
It’s quite an elementary tutorial, so if you’re an experienced hand at off-camera flash or studio lighting, then this isn’t for you. But if you feel like you just haven’t quite made that intuitive connection yet between those 4 controls, and how it affects manual flash exposure, hang in there …
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