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Using flash with incandescent / tungsten light

June 14, 2011 Neil vN 23 Comments

Using flash with incandescent / tungsten light

I have used this photograph several times in the past to illustrate various aspects of flash photography in low light, so it might be time to discuss this image more thoroughly. We'll also pull together a few other topics and see how it all comes together at this one point: Dragging the shutter Gelling your flash Bounce flash technique Direction of light The advantage of using TTL flash Working alongside a videographer    Read more inside...

Mixing the white balance of different light sources

May 9, 2011 Neil vN 13 Comments

Mixing the white balance of different light sources

While we would do well to gel our flash when working in a very warm or incandescent spectrum, (such as when shooting at a venue bathed in Tungsten light), the last few articles showed how we can use it to our advantage when using different light sources with different color balance. The effect can be quite dramatic. The examples shown have been varied: In the first example (with Bethany as our model), we looked at using random found available light as portrait lighting. With the next example, the effect was purposely sought  Read more inside...

wedding portraits: finding something to bounce your flash off

April 15, 2011 Neil vN 22 Comments

wedding portraits: finding something to bounce your flash off

One of the frequent questions that come up, is what to do when there is nothing to bounce your flash off.  When working indoors and there are bounce-able surfaces around me, my first instinct is to use on-camera bounce flash. It is easy to use, and the results can look surprisingly good, especially if you consider the minimal effort that went into it. No extra gear to carry around and set up. But when there is nothing to bounce flash off, you have to adapt your technique ...  Read more inside...

Flash photography basics

April 12, 2011 Neil vN 27 Comments

Flash photography basics

In teaching workshops on flash photography, I frequently encounter newer photographers who are overwhelmed by flash photography. Overwhelmed to the extent that they fear their flash, and would rather not deal with flash photography at all. Instead, they adopt the idea that they will only specialize in available light photography. Now, that kind of thinking is an artistic dead-end. As a photographer that aspires to truly being creative, you need to understand light, regardless of how it is supplied to us. I do feel that flash photography is one of those  Read more inside...

Video tutorial – Using the ‘black foamie thing’

March 8, 2011 Neil vN 98 Comments

 

Video tutorial - Using the 'black foamie thing'

   Read more inside...

using the PocketWizard AC3 Zone Controller

February 20, 2011 Neil vN 33 Comments

using the PocketWizard AC3 Zone Controller

This portrait of musician, Josh Adams, was a fairly quick set-up. I deliberately chose an area in a large hotel conference room to shoot this. A bit of a challenge to see how quickly I could get a simple but dramatic portrait out of a 'nothing' scenario. Here's the pull-back shot that will show you the area, as well as the placement of the lights: The light came from three speedlights, all controlled with the PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceivers. They in turn were controlled via an on-camera FlexTT5 (for Nikon), with an AC3 Zone  Read more inside...

review: Lumodi beauty dish for speedlights

January 15, 2011 Neil vN 12 Comments

review: Lumodi beauty dish for speedlights

Light from a Beauty Dish has a distinctive look - an interesting combination of soft light with a pronounced fall-off to the edges. With a softbox there is a lot of scattering of the light, making it exactly that soft light source that it is named after.  A softbox is therefore quite forgiving of how you position the light in relation to your subject.  The beauty dish in comparison, used as a single light source, will give light that can be both dramatic and pleasing.  (Not nearly as hard as video light or direct unmodified  Read more inside...

Flash ‘on top of’ ambient light – Adding bounce flash to ambient light

January 14, 2011 Neil vN 20 Comments

Adding bounce flash to ambient light

Using images from a past workshop, I want to explain a simple concept with flash photography on location. In workshops and seminars I quite often describe the flash as 'riding on top of' the available light exposure. It's just another way of describing the usual technique of under-exposing the ambient light somewhat, and then using flash to give correct exposure. We can thereby control the final look of the image by controlling the direction of light from our flash. By using flash like this, we can use the flash to 'clean up' the light in the  Read more inside...

why use such high ISO settings with flash?

December 27, 2010 Neil vN 38 Comments

why should you use a higher ISO?

The advice for optimal camera settings for best image quality are usually: - use the lowest possible ISO: - at an aperture about 3 stops down from maximum (the widest) aperture; - at a shutter speed fast enough to avoid camera shake and unintentional subject movement. Taking this general advice at face value, means using the camera at its base ISO, which would either be 100 ISO or 200 ISO. However, while this advice is sound in theory, in practice this doesn't have direct consequence on my decision about my camera settings. In terms of  Read more inside...

softbox vs shoot-through umbrella vs bounce umbrella

December 20, 2010 Neil vN 32 Comments

Comparison between a softbox, a white shoot-through umbrella and a bounce umbrella

I've had several requests from readers of the Tangents blog about how the light from a softbox would differ from the light from an umbrella. Spurred on by that, and by my own curiosity, I met up a while ago with my favorite model, Anelisa, specifically to do comparison shots. And here it is ...  Read more inside...

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