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Posts Tagged ‘flash’

Flash inverse law…what?

This might make your head hurt a little bit but an interesting read and start on flash photography from Dustin Diaz. Although being able to use our 2.8 lenses is nice, I think it’s important to understand and learn how to use flash to create shots and do more. Here’s a pic I created with some off camera flash lighting and a small softbox.

Aug 21, 2009 | Categories: Photography | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Flash fill-in part2

Just wanted to follow up with Maurice’s post with some different scenarios in which i’ve tried to use flash. A key principle I try to use with flash is that i want to make the shot look like there was no flash. i hate the extra shine and bouncing light that i see from a lot of flash-driven shots. This is the beauty of being able to manually adjust your settings. Again, I don’t have a lot of before/after pictures that are identical but I have a few sample shots that show these principles.

Basically there are 2 principles to keep in mind. Actually 4 according to zack arias, but i think these are the easiest to start with.

  1. Shutter Speed – controls ambient exposure (background)
  2. Aperture – controls flash exposure (how bright the flash lights up the scene)

Setting 1 – indoors with low light. You want to light up the whole scene – not just the subjects in the foreground. You want to include the background. Aperture around f/4 is good. play with it for necessary lighting that you want.

  • Lower the shutter speed – like 1/20, 1/30
  • the first picture has a shutter speed of 1/100
  • the second picture has a shutter speed of 1/30 and the background comes in a lot more.

Setting 2 – outdoors and heavily back-lit. This is right from Mo’s tutorial.

  • Key here is to increase the Shutter speed and decrease aperture.
  • the first picture shows a great background but my daughter’s face is a little dark b/c it’s caught in the shadow. look at the railing. this was at 1/320 and f/16 but no flash. any more adjustments and i would have blown out the background although she would have been lit better.

  • I added the flash here with the same settings and you can see how well and evenly it’s lit-up. I would say part of this is b/c of the Nikon TTL, which rocks, in my humble opinion.

Jun 05, 2009 | Categories: Photography | Tags: , , , | Leave A Comment »

A flash of sunlight

A quickie on using a flash/strobe: Daytime ‘fill-flash.’

Have you ever had this situation? It’s bright outside, so you figure your photo will look great. You aim, use auto, and fire – and, your subjects are dark, like in this test photo (taken at Pedernales Falls in Texas):

What’s a day-time shooter to do? Surprise – flash use is not limited to the indoors! Whenever your background is brighter than your foreground, and you use auto-exposure, the foreground will end up darker than you would like. This type of situation is called being “back-lit.” Sometimes the brightness contrast between fg/bg is too great, so you have to simply choose to expose for the foreground, and consequently “blow-out,” or overexpose, the background (you could expose for the background as well, and “block-up,” or underexpose, the foreground, but this is rarely what is wanted). But when the fg/bg contrast is more manageable, using the flash can help “fill in” the foreground enough to provide a usable photo. Here, I used the on-board flash on my Canon 300D, and while the background stayed the same, the foreground now is much better exposed:

The trees in the background are still kind of hot, but the people in the foreground are much better exposed. This still isn’t a great example of flash photography, really, because (a) the foreground could still have used some more flash power (the on-board flash’s Guide Number is only about 15 or so), and (b) there is noticeable glare/hotspots on some of the people’s faces due to the flash being close to the lens. But given the situation, out in the hills of Pedernales, fill-flash made a photo with an unusable foreground, into a much more usable photo (aside from the horizon being skewed a little to the right =D ).
You can also do this with digicams; hit the flash button until you get the lightning bolt by itself (as opposed to lightning bolt w/ an ‘A’ on it, or the lightning bolt w/ the no-smoking sign on it) to force the flash. Try it out! Even if the subjects aren’t completely in the shade, photographers often use fill-flash to get a little eye sparkle, or to fill in the slight shadows under people’s noses, cheekbones, and chins. And if you have any comments or further tips please feel free to comment back. I think John will give a more in-depth treatment on flash in a future post, but I thought this might be a nice end-of-the-week post that could be useful for people’s outings over the weekend. Happy shooting!

May 27, 2009 | Categories: Photography | Tags: | Leave A Comment »