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Tangents

flash & ambient light – reverse engineering an image (2)

July 27, 2010

My friend, Josh Lynn, just posted this spectacular wedding photograph.  It does look like he used flash there, so I thought this would make a another good example to see if we can ‘reverse engineer’ a photograph in terms of his settings and setup.

I first had a guess at how he set this up; and then had a look at the EXIF data, and this revealed the true story.  See if you can decipher this image yourself, without scrolling down at first …

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overpowering hard sunlight with flash

July 14, 2010

For this part of a photo session with Johannie, we worked in an alley.  The light was very uneven, with some swathes of sunlight falling directly on her.  (See the image below for the photo without flash.)  To get rid of this uneven sunlight falling on her, we have to add at least as much light on her as the brightest areas lit by sunlight. In the example above, our exposure is set to 1/250 @ f13 @ 200 ISO and we can see from the bright patch of light on her shoulder, that we’re at the edge of acceptable exposure. Any wider on our aperture, or higher on our ISO or slower on our shutter speed, and we’ll start to lose detail in the sunlit areas.

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first curtain sync vs rear curtain sync

June 2, 2010

first curtain vs rear (2nd) curtain flash sync

A topic that has been briefly discussed on the Tangents blog before, is that of first curtain flash sync vs second curtain flash sync.  First curtain sync is also often called front curtain sync; and rear curtain sync is often called second curtain sync. (This is also covered in my book on flash photography).

Since it is an important topic in flash photography, let’s look at what this entails and the difference between the two ways we can sync our flash .. and why would the one way would be preferable over the other.

To help us with the explanation, we have a great subject who was quite willing to pose for some comparative photographs:

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background exposure and flash

April 28, 2010

flash photography – background exposure and flash

When I saw this dramatic sky with the approaching storm during our recent shoot at Coney Island, I knew I wanted to photograph our model against it.  By the time I actually started taking photos, the raindrops were already spattering around us. So there was little time to work.

I knew I wanted a brooding sky.  Now, depending on how I chose my exposure, I could’ve had a much the sky appear much brighter, or just a little bit brighter than shown here.  There’s a whole range of possibilities in how I could’ve exposed for my background, and we can choose a wide range of settings.  In this sense there really isn’t any “incorrect exposure” for this particular background. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to choose our settings such that we’d over-expose our model.

This is idea holds true while we consider the sky as our main background.  The street areas, and the amusement park areas are indeed under-exposed.  They do appear too dark if I had chosen that as my specific background. But the sky as such, isn’t under-exposed.  This might seem a semantic difference, but it is an important distinction to make, in that quite often there is no specific under- or over-exposure, but just a way that YOU decide to expose for certain tones.  I simple chose to expose for the sky as darker tones.  And I could’ve placed them “anywhere”, even as near-black.

Here is the test shot without flash …

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balancing flash with ambient exposure

April 8, 2010

balancing flash with available light / ambient exposure

Since many of the questions I get on the Tangents blog relate to balancing flash with available light, I want to pull the replies together into a single article.  A reference point again, instead of the replies scattered throughout this website.

The questions most often revolve around:
-  exposure metering for available light ,
-  exposure metering for TTL flash and ambient light,
-  whether to use manual flash or TTL flash,
-  flash exposure compensation (FEC),
-  choice of aperture,
-  maximum flash sync speed,
-  metering for off-camera manual flash and ambient light
-  choosing our settings to balance manual flash and ambient light,
-  whether to drag the shutter, or not.

The answer to the questions about how to balance flash and ambient light, is often along the lines of “it depends”.  It really depends on:
- the scenario you have, and
- what you want to achieve.

Now that all sounds quite vague.  Being told that you can pretty much “do what you want”, doesn’t help if you don’t even quite know where to start.  Most of the answers are in the linked articles there, and on this page on my Top 20 Flash Photography Tips.

But, let’s look at one specific image, and analyze what our options are, and see if we can make sense of it all …

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balancing flash and ambient exposure – where do you even start?

February 9, 2010

balancing flash and ambient exposure

This topic – balancing flash and ambient exposure – seems to one that many newer photographers struggle with. The big hurdle seems to be the basic starting point – how do you decide on the exposure for each?

I’d like to explore this topic a bit with this post.  The trigger for this was a question that someone emailed me regarding an image in my book on flash photography. Instead of answering the question directly, I thought that a wider answer might be more illuminating. We’re still on that perpetual quest for more aha! moments. So let’s see where we head with this. (I’ll come back to the specific question and answer at the end of this.)

But why do we even want to add flash to a subject when the available light is soft?

The answer is that with flash we can control the direction and quality of light, and create a more dynamic image.

We don’t necessarily just use flash to avoid camera shake and / or poor exposure in low light. We use flash to create better light on our subject. We can ‘clean up’ the light that falls on our subject. Or to create more dynamic and interesting light. It’s about control. We decide.  So where do we start?

The simplest approach for me, when I work in fairly flat and even ambient light, is to under-expose the ambient light by a certain amount.  Then we add flash for correct exposure.  So how much do we under-expose the ambient light by?  Well, it depends. Usually a stop is good. Two stops can also work. If you’ve seen some of the images in fashion and music magazines where the subject is in a pool of light .. yet, the sunlit cityscape is darker, then that is because the photographer under-exposed the ambient light by 2-3 stops. Even in bright sunlight.   So we have some leeway.  That should ease some of the anxiety.

Under-exposing the ambient light by a stop, and then adding flash …  is but one scenario, and one recipe. This approach won’t apply to every possible situation you might encounter .. but it’s a good starting point in grasping that Big Question – where do we even start in balancing flash and ambient light?

Let’s start of with an example where the previous method wouldn’t work:

settings: 1/125 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO
lighting:  Q-flash T5D-R, in TTL mode diffused by medium softbox to the right

(A speedlight in the softbox would’ve worked just as well here.)

Here’s the image without flash, just so we have a reference ..

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flagging your speedlight

January 9, 2010

This dramatic portrait of a model, Ambyr, comes from Mitch Todd.

Mitch attended the Dallas workshop last year, and sent me this image just a few days ago. He used a speedlight on a light-stand to give direct off-camera light on the model, but he also used a piece of black foam to flag the light, so that the spill light was contained.  This caused the distinct light fall-off that you see there.

What I like about this, is the off-the-cuff improvisation during a shoot.  A simple adaptation that gave different results than just bouncing flash.

Mitch’s description of the technique:

“I used some of my extra “black foamie thing” material to make a snoot for my 580 EX II strobe and shot this picture in an attempt to emulate the video light glamour shots we did at the Dallas workshop.  I made the snoot made with black foam attached to the strobe with a hair band.

Shot with my Canon 7D and Canon 24-70 F2.8 lens.
ISO 100, 1/250, F9.0 – which made the lighted hallway go dark.

Lit with 1 Canon 580 EX II strobe at 1/2 or full power on a Cheetah stand in her hallway.  I shot a few exposures of Ambyr and used a combination of histogram and LCD screen and crossed my fingers.

I am very happy with the results and will be using this technique again.  No Photoshopping yet.  The model loves it.  I never would have thought of doing lighting like this before your workshop.  Thanks.”

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

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combining flash and ambient light

January 4, 2010

combining flash and ambient light

Going by the emails that I receive, one of the areas that many photographers struggle with is that of combining ambient exposure and flash exposure.  This question  is also expressed in other ways.  It can be a frustrated, “where do we even start?”  I also often see it expressed as an involved step-by-step deconstruction of technique, making the entire process more complex than it is.

In reply to that, and many other emails I’ve received in the past few months, I’d like to offer an analysis of a few images from a recent shoot.


[ click on the photo for a larger image ]

One of my favorite clients has the most adorable baby boy that she wanted some portraits of.  I had to shoot fast, since his attention span was .. oh, zero.   He’s still a baby!  I also wanted to be able to cover myself in getting some available-light only portraits, and some with bounce flash.  I didn’t want the flash to be overwhelmingly bright.  And in bouncing the flash, there was also less chance of disturbing the baby.   So I had to mix it up in order to get some variety, and be sure of images that worked.

The image at the top was shot with the Nikon D3 and the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S
Lighting here was a combination of available light and bounce flash.  And as usual, I used the black foamie thing to flag the flash so NO light from the flashgun fell directly on the child.

My camera settings:  1/100 @ f4.5 @ 640 ISO, using TTL flash
The FEC was not recorded, but would’ve been around 0EV because my flash isn’t merely fill-flash here, but fairly dominant.

Now where the settings look like they might be informative, I also often feel that these numerical values are a diversion.  Too many photographers will get hooked on the choice of f4.5 over another aperture.  Whey 1/100th of a second?  Why 640 ISO?

The truth is that this could’ve been a different combination of settings.  What is important here, is the quality of light.  It is our major concern here, and should interest us more than f4.5 at this moment.

The light on the baby’s face is directional.  There is more light coming from camera left .. and from this you should be able to deduce that I did indeed bounce my flash to my left.  Using that piece of black foam to flag my flash, I was able to get directional light like that.

The light is soft.  Since I bounced my flash into the room, and it bounced off the walls, and furniture, I will have soft light.

So those two aspects of the light from my flash is easily understood – soft directional light.

Now let’s look at how I chose to balance my flash with the available light …

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my top 20 flash photography tips

December 28, 2009

Flash photography is one of those subjects that seem daunting from ‘the outside’.  It might seem like you’re chipping away at something so big that it might even appear incomprehensible. 

I actually do believe that flash photography is one of those subjects where you have to grasp a number of things simultaneously, before anything makes real sense. 

So here is my list of Top 20 Flash Photography Tips. 

This page has just been added to the main set of pages on flash photography techniques. My intention is that it might serve as a solid starting point in understanding flash photography, with links leading to various other pages within the site.   Hopefully it all converges to the same point – some aha! moments where everything seem a lot clearer.  And hopefully that page will help some in making flash photography more accessible a subject than it might appear.  

As always, your feedback and questions on that page is welcome.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

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why use a light modifier that is black?

December 22, 2009

This question repeatedly comes up as response to the various articles here on my favorite light modifier – the black foamie thing.

For anyone new to this, here are the two main articles on how I use a piece of black foam to flag my on-camera speedlight:
- the black foamie thing,
- my choice of flash modifiers

The question invariably comes up:
why a piece of black foam and not a white card or a piece of white foam?

I have replied to this in the various articles here, using this image below .. but I think the reply tends to be overlooked as the articles are pushed deeper. So with that, I thought I’d resurrect my reply to this one specific reply to that question.

Looking at this image, which also appears in my book on flash photography:

I wanted to place my light source (ie, the area where I am bouncing off), at some point to the right of me, and above me, but also a little to the front of the bride. This way her arm and back to me, are under-lit compared to her face (which we see here as a reflection in the mirror.)  Instead of a plastic light modifier or something similar, I used a black piece of foam to flag the light from my speedlight.

An open card with white on the one side might have thrown too much light into the room again, flattening the lighting.  I don’t want that.  I want directional light.  I want that interplay between light and shade.  I want contrast.

And in an opposite way of reasoning, a snoot might be too specific, since I do need a fairly large area to bounce effectively.

I like this piece of black foam. I can roll it a little bit with my left hand, and turn it into a snoot if I want to.  I can also roll it back and open it up.  Ultimately, this piece of black foam is simple, yet flexible.  And this is what I use if I need to bounce my speedlight with a fair amount of control over the flash’s light.

Then there are also two other perennial questions:

- if there are no bounce-able surfaces, then you have to make other plans.  You either have to use different light modifiers, or use direct flash, or ideally, off-camera lighting.  You will obviously not be able to use a piece of black foam to flag yourself and your speedlight out of all kinds of impossible scenarios.  You have to be adaptable in how you use light.

- yes, I do use other flash modifiers at times.  But indoors, (and even outdoors), where I have surfaces I can bounce my flash off, this piece of black foam gives me the control I need.   And the results are there in the images that I show on this site, as well as my work as a wedding photographer in New Jersey.

As a summary, I want to emphasize this point again – there is no quick fix.  I am staunchly against the idea of a cure-all approach to lighting and flash photography.  Specifically, the idea that a single piece of plastic attached to your flash will give you the best results all the time – that idea will hold you back.

You have to constantly adapt your technique by considering your subject, the scenario you’re in .. and the results you’d finally like to achieve.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

       Comments (21)

 

 

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