Messing about with flash

[stevegreen]

Nothing worth watching on the TV earleir tonight so I had a mess about photographing some rocks......as you do.

I was trying to understand how light worked, how the shadows are affected by the position of the flash and how different powered flash outputs affected the final image.

Anyway, just messing about really and I quite liked this shot.

One other that I took was this in which I was trying to get the shadows in the right place as they resembled a person.........I hadn't been drinking either.

[FeTT]

I like number 2 a lot the shadow reminds me of a weeble lol (people with young children will know what this is) I need to get more practice with me 430ex every thing i take using it looks like a snapshot, saying that a lot of my photos look like snaps hehe. Good work though both pics have an impact to them.

Sean

[Holowlegs]

Hello there

No flash expert here, IMHO

#1 think you may of over done it a tad on the left hand side. I would of liked to off seen a little bit of detail that side, and not blown out the way it is. I do like the tones of the rocks on the right hand side and the white background works well here.


Cheers Holo

[jonnypb]

i'm liking the way you captured #2 - shadow looks like a giant jelly baby!

#1 is a bit too bright for me

[springtide]

Great stuff, nice one! Love the shadows and simplicity!

Are these shot with your replacement Cactus triggers? (Obviousy spotted them on Flickr!)

[GaryK26]

I guess number 1 could be described as a high-key-pebblie shot

[stevegreen]

Originally Posted by Holowlegs

#1 think you may of over done it a tad on the left hand side. I would of liked to off seen a little bit of detail that side, and not blown out the way it is. I do like the tones of the rocks on the right hand side and the white background works well here.

Yeah, I agree. The left hand side was totally blown out but the way that the rocks on the right hand side retained detail appealed to me. I think maybe a slight adjustment on the flash power would have sorted that.

Not easy when you have flash power, flash position, aperture and shutter speed to contend with........it's a massive amount of settings to try and get right when you have no idea what you are doing and why

Originally Posted by springtide

Are these shot with your replacement Cactus triggers? (Obviousy spotted them on Flickr!)

Yep, the replacements arrived and work perfectly

Originally Posted by GaryK26

I guess number 1 could be described as a high-key-pebblie shot

Very high key!!!

[denno75uk]

Both great shot's Steve, esp if your still just experimenting.
There are a few on here getting into flash now, but it is still a very intimidating skill. And as someone still very much learning in all aspects of photography, the fact that the main protagonists of flash are you more experienced guys, just makes it seem even more beyond me. Which is silly, because the more examples I see where flash is used in the right hands, the more I think it's one of the skills that inexperienced practitioners would benefit from learning most.

[stevegreen]

Originally Posted by denno75uk

And as someone still very much learning in all aspects of photography, the fact that the main protagonists of flash are you more experienced guys, just makes it seem even more beyond me. Which is silly, because the more examples I see where flash is used in the right hands, the more I think it's one of the skills that inexperienced practitioners would benefit from learning most.

It's totally beyond me at the moment to be completely honest, but something I think that will help anyone who takes photographs. I think it's a natural progression as taking shots with ambient light only require you knowing how to use the three basics that control light ie aperture, shutter speed and ISO. With flash, you have (more) control over the light and it therefore makes it a completely different skill set. I am at the extreme lower end of the learning curve, but using the basic ETTL available I have still managed to make the flash work the way I wanted it to, in this shot for example, the camera was metering for the ambient light giving a correctly exposed background whilst the flash filled in the subject.

I'm nowhere near the skills of others on here (I have yet to manage to take a shot like Scotts here) but with practice and understanding and, more importantly, knowledge of what the equipment does (I had to PM Scott about that shot as I couldn't understand how he managed to get the shutter so fast) I hope to be able to climb up the learning curve and use it all properly to make images how I want them.

At the end of the day, it's all good fun!

[baldrick]

I picked up a Jessops 360AFD for me K10D last week to allow me to photograph my parents' house for their brochure. Now I want to learn how to use it to maximum effect and I'm pretty much in the same boat as Steve, it's a whole lot of stuff to come to terms with!

Are there any books/guides that anyone can recommend?

[stevegreen]

I had a read of this this morning and it is reasonably good

[ksten]

Hi Steve,

Glad you got some working cactus triggers in the end!

I'm no expert on using flash and I'm probably stating the obvious but thought it might be of use / interest to make a few comments with some things I've picked up recently (By the way this is using manual flash / camera settings so I don't know if everything is still applicable to ETTL and other camera modes) ...

Originally Posted by stevegreen

I think maybe a slight adjustment on the flash power would have sorted that.

You can also adjust the brightness by moving the flash towards / away from the subject as the brightness of the flash falls off as it moves further away from the subject. This will also cause the shadows to be softer / harder as this depends on apparrent size of the light source as seen by the subject. E.g. the sun which is a massive light source casts hard shadows here as it is far away so the apparrent light size is small.

The affect of distance on flash brightness was most noticeable to me when trying to evenly light a wall in the background. E.g. if the flash is just out of frame on the left and aimed so it is firing across the surface of the wall, then the wall is brighter on the left than it is on the right. To get round this you can move the flash head quite far to the left and increase the flash power as required. This means that the difference in distance between the flash / left wall edge and flash / right wall edge is relatively small and so the light fall off isn't as apparent.

I seem to be going off on a tangent but another "aha" moment was when I learnt that the centre of the flash is more powerful than the edge. E.g. if you're lighting a group of people from one side then the people nearer the flash would be lit more brightly than the people further away. You could do as described above for lighting the wall evenly, or you could aim the centre of the flash at the people further away so that the people nearer the flash are light by light coming from the edge of the flash. This way the light fall of due to distance counteracts the light brightness from the centre / edge of the flash so you end up with evenly lit people. I think this is called feathering the light.

Originally Posted by stevegreen

Not easy when you have flash power, flash position, aperture and shutter speed to contend with........it's a massive amount of settings to try and get right when you have no idea what you are doing and why

There is definitely lots to think about! I've found it helpful to think of the photograph as a balance between the ambient and the flash. Controlling these two things comes down to two rules:

1. Ambient light is affected by both the aperture and shutter speed.
2. Flash light is only affected by the aperture.

If you want to adjust only how bright the ambient is you can change the shutter speed.

If you want to only adjust how bright the flash is you can adjust the aperture and then change the shutter speed by the same number of stops in the opposite direction to bring the ambient back to where you started. This saves having to walk between the camera and flash to adjust flash power as you arrow in on the ambient / flash balance that you're looking for.

Originally Posted by stevegreen

I had to PM Scott about that shot as I couldn't understand how he managed to get the shutter so fast

I don't know anything about Nikon kit nor the 5D for that matter, but thought that I would mention a little about high speed sync on the 580. Ignoring the cactus triggers for the moment, if the 580 is on your 5D hotshoe then I think you may be limited to a sync speed of 1/200th. You can overcome this by enabling high speed sync. This allows you to use quicker shutter speeds by firing the flash multiple times as the slit between the first and second curtain travels over your sensor, so you end up with a correctly exposed image. Quicker shutter speeds allow you to overpower the bright ambient conditions or even when shooting directly into the sun as with Scott's photograph.

If you take the 580 off camera and fire it by the cactus triggers you could well still be limited to quite short shutter slow shutter speeds (E.g. 1/200th). The camera doesn't know you're firing a flash so will allow you to select say 1/1000th but you could find that none or only a small portion of your sensor was exposed to the flash so you get unpredictable results.

I agree, it's all good fun! I'm looking forward to hearing about what you've learned over the coming weeks.

Cheers.

[stevegreen]

Thanks for that Keith.

As you said initially it's kind of obvious sometimes but you can get yourself into a bit of a muddle with so much going on at one fraction of a second.

Whilst I was messing around last night I realised that for nice even lighting a single flash doesn't really cut the mustard as it is only one light source and difficult to even out unless you bounce it, diffuse it or reflect it all over the place. I took loads just trying to get the light to react in a certain way and the exposure how I wanted it.......very much experimenting but I think that is the way to do it.

The high speed sync I did not know about (thus the PM to Scott) but I can see that being very useful in certain situations. Much the same with learning about the three elements of exposure I think the way to do it is practice, practice, practice and this will all add to the understanding. I'll get it right with one flash and then maybe get another

[stevegreen]

By the way, forgot to add the link that Scott so kindly sent me.

http://www.rpphoto.com/howto/view.asp?articleID=1026

[Holowlegs]

Hello there

Picked up quite a few tips here. great thread.

Cheers for the link Steve, will now have another go at fill in flash with what speeds I want, after reading about High Speed Sync. Very handy.


Cheers Holo