{"id":3652,"date":"2010-06-14T22:15:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T02:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=3652"},"modified":"2017-08-11T17:22:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T21:22:14","slug":"off-camera-lighting-bringing-sparkle-on-a-rainy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/off-camera-lighting-bringing-sparkle-on-a-rainy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"off-camera flash – bringing sparkle on a rainy day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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using off-camera flash to give more snap to photos<\/h1>\n

Scheduling an on-location photo session, we are always left at the mercy of the weather. \u00a0This Sunday the threat of rain turned into a real downpour just before the photo session with a couple, Jen & Chris, whose wedding I am photographing later on in 2011. \u00a0During phone conversation while driving in, we agreed to just go ahead and work under the overhangs of various buildings if it should rain. When we started, it was still raining so we moved to certain spots where we were shielded from the rain. \u00a0I could shoot towards the building facades, or ‘outwards’.<\/p>\n

What gave me the most control though over the photo session, was the use of off-camera flash. \u00a0As mentioned in another article here, why I love off-camera flash<\/a>, the major benefit of having off-camera lighting, is the control over the quality and direction of light<\/strong>. \u00a0Instead of being limited in the direction I can shoot, I can use any background that looks good … and add beautiful light to my subject. \u00a0The colors pop, skin tones are great and it all looks pretty good … with relatively minimal effort. \u00a0It just works! \u00a0Place your subject and add off-camera flash.<\/p>\n

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For this photo session, I again used the Lastolite Ezybox softbox<\/a> (B&H), with a speedlight, just as recently reviewed<\/a>. The softbox is easy to carry around; easy to assemble, and is light-weight. \u00a0 And the light looks really sweet …<\/p>\n

Image settings for the two images above:<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f4 @ 640 ISO .. TTL flash,\u00a0FEC \u00a0-0.3 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 48mm<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f4 @ 640 ISO .. TTL flash,\u00a0FEC +0.7 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 AF-S VR II … at 120mm<\/p>\n

The speedlight (Nikon SB-900) was used in TTL mode, and fired wirelessly by my on-camera speedlight. \u00a0I had disabled the output from my on-camera flash. \u00a0It just acted as the Master flash, and its sole purpose was to fire the Remote \/ Slave speedlight that was mounted on the softbox.<\/p>\n

The Ezybox made it easy to swivel the Slave flash around so that the Wireless TTL control sensor faced towards the camera. \u00a0This way it was much more reliable in picking up the Master flash’s control signals.<\/p>\n

Throughout the photo session, the basic technique in balancing the flash with the ambient light, was to under-expose the ambient light to a certain extent … and then add TTL flash to bring the subjects’ exposure up correctly. This technique is described in several posts at the top of the off-camera flash resource page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 640 ISO .. TTL flash,\u00a0FEC 0 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 24mm<\/p>\n

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With this image of the couple crossing the street, I didn’t use flash since it was raining heavily. \u00a0But the direction I wanted them to walk in, was such that the light falling on them was from their front. \u00a0This gave clean open light on them. \u00a0It worked.<\/p>\n

1\/500 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO
\nNikon D3; Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 AF-S VR II … at 135mm<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n

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Here I wanted to show the test shot, to show how much the available light was under-exposed by, at the settings I chose.<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 640 ISO ..TTL flash,\u00a0\u00a0FEC -0.7 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 62mm for the image below<\/p>\n

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For this next photo, I asked the couple to show off their dance moves in front of this colorful fence. They were just under the edge of the foot bridge, so was sheltered from the rain, but enough light came from behind them to give nice gentle rim-lighting. \u00a0Then I simply added light from my wirelessly controlled TTL flash on the softbox.<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f4 @ 500 ISO .. TTL flash,\u00a0FEC -0.7 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 AF-S VR II … at 110mm<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

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Here again I wanted to show the effect of the flash, and how the image would’ve appeared without the flash .. slightly under-exposed at the settings I chose. \u00a0The flash then simply cleans up the light on them, giving the photo that extra bit of snap.<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 200 ISO .. TTL flash,\u00a0FEC +0.3 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 AF-S VR II … around 85mm<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

For the next two images shown here, I chose an elevated point of view to isolate them against the cobble-stone road.<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f4.5 @ 200 ISO .. TTL flash, FEC +0.3 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 AF-S VR II … at 125mm<\/p>\n

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The processing here was all done by adjusting a few sliders in ACR \/ Lightroom. \u00a0No actions, no Photoshop filters of plug-ins.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 640 ISO ..TTL flash,\u00a0\u00a0FEC 0 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 24mm<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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for both images:
\n1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 640 ISO ..TTL flash,\u00a0\u00a0FEC -0.3 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 35mm<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/200 @ f4.5 @ 640 ISO ..TTL flash,\u00a0\u00a0FEC -0.3 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 35mm<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And a final image, with a pull-back shot to show the placement of the softbox. \u00a0In this case I had the softbox fairly close to me, so I wouldn’t get a reflection of the flash in the windows.<\/p>\n

1\/200 @ f5.6 @ 640 ISO ..TTL flash,\u00a0\u00a0FEC -0.7 EV
\nNikon D3; Nikon 24-70 mm f2.8 AF-S \u00a0… at 24mm for the square cropped image.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

More articles on off-camera flash …<\/a><\/p>\n

For comparison, here is a photo session shot in the same area a week later, where I decided to only use the existing light. \u00a0No flash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

using off-camera flash to give more snap to photos Scheduling an on-location photo session, we are always left at the mercy of the weather. \u00a0This Sunday the threat of rain turned into a real downpour just before the photo session with a couple, Jen & Chris, whose wedding I am photographing later on in 2011. Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,22,110,31],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-flash-photography","8":"category-lighting","9":"category-off-camera-flash","10":"category-photo-shoot","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3652"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27677,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions\/27677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3652"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}