Balancing flash with the sun

Oh my...it's been a while hasn't it? I'm back and I tell you it wasn't the lack of photographic effort...since these were taken back in August. The blog just became the lowest priority on the list for a while.

This time we are going to balance some added light with the sun. Once again we'll walk through each step and photo building up to our end result.

Yes, this was a R&R trip...a little bed and breakfast out in Amish country Ohio. Man was it relaxing there. Drug the camera along though and wanted to at least get a few photos to remember the trip. Took a ton but felt this quick series would be a good example of walking through this.

Found this nice little bridge over a fake stream. Started by getting the composition down.



Bridge, B&B in the background and beautiful Amy. Had the sun behind the B&B and the other side was a road...and well the bridge was here. So we'll let the sun be light number one and we'll add light number 2. Really though I didn't need a lot of light more of a spotlight on Amy to make her pop from the strong highlights from the house. Let the camera's matrix meter the scene for me at f8/160th.

I decided to use a snooted flash to direct the light to her head and shoulders area only. I really didn't want to pop too much and risk lighting up the fence and her shirt since they were pretty light.

Let's start by dialing in the sun. First...my 7D only had a 1/160th sync speed...so...I can't crank that up any. So let's stop down the lens to f14.



There we go. At least we have some control now. Let's add the flash in. To be honest, not sure what power level I started with but really it doesn't matter. I'm at f14 so probably at least going to go 1/4 power. I am zoomed and snooted so that buys me some power.



Now we're talking. How about a little bit more?



Ok, let's go full power



Great...I know I can work with these settings and I have enough power in my flash. Let's build the whole exposure now. Let's drop down to f10 and gain sun power and flash power at the same time! Here I want to lighten up the background. I could have lowered my shutter speed and left my flash exposure alone. It would have stayed the same regardless of the shutter speed...right....Riigghhhttt? However, I opened up my aperture because not only will that buy me some more background light but I will also be able to turn the flash power down. No reason to stress the poor batteries, plus I'll gain recycle time.



There we go. The whole image is brighter, sun and flash. Let's readjust the flash.



Bingo! Exactly what I was going for. See how the snooted light only hits her face? I'm not bringing up the exposure of her white shirt. This worked out nicely. The sun is actually providing some fill on her face and making what is generally a really hard light...seem soft. The sun is so bright it's bouncing all over the place. If you look at the very fist picture in this series you'll see her face already was very flatly lit. All we did was add a little punch!

So now what? Listen, the light's setup...the scene is dialed in, change up a few things. First let's try a different pose.



If I remember right I had to drop the snoot just a bit for this one above. This to me looks more relaxed.

Now let's zoom in.



Whoa..what happened to the sun? Damn clouds...can't control those now can we. I included this so you could see what that flash looks like without the harsh light of the sun. Here is another zoomed out.



Whole different mood now and boy does that light make her pop out in the frame. I like the sun in there...really adds to the photo for me. We'll wait for it to come back but in the mean time...keep snapping!



Even in this situation when the sun is going in and out keep trying different things and different poses.

Then the sun pops back outta the clouds and bang...a big smile!



Now there is my favorite. It really reminds me of being there and how relaxing and fun it was! Big smile on Amy's face which is now perfectly lit. The sun lighting her hair and rimming her body. She is now more prominent than the hot spot on the roof of the house. We got it! Also in the top left of this frame you can see part of the snoot. Luckily I got one with it in there since it gives a good idea of exactly where the light was.

Still going to play though....let's try a different mood. Open up to f8. Drop the power on the flash a bit. If you remember, this is where the camera wanted the exposure to be initially, f8 at 160th.



This has a whole different mood to me. Love the posture and look.



Last one...and that's a wrap. Easier than maybe you thought? Doesn't have to be difficult...at all. Just need to think through things. Figure out what you want and then make it happen! I'm happy with my memories that I get to keep. I've provided you with out of the camera JPGs. No editing at all.

Hope you enjoyed the ride.

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Falcon Eyes light modifier kit

David Hobby doesn't tweet very often on twitter (@strobist) but when he does it's usually something good. Clearly he has done his twitter homework on good twitetiquet. A few weeks ago he tweeted a link to this Wired post about a six-in-one lighting kit made by Falcon Eyes in Hong Kong. I'm not a huge fan of fancy light mods AT ALL. However this kit really piqued my interest. I have all of my home made light modifiers for my small flashes and honestly they all work perfectly fine. In fact I use them a lot. I'll be honest there were 2 parts in this kit that I was interested in but I found out I liked the whole kit...well almost.

The kit itself was $88 at the time of this writing and additional mounts for more flashes were just shy of $20.

I took some photos of the whole kit and then used each modifier to take a photo of the kit to give a general example of what each does. I've been wanting to do a post about light modifiers and there is no question I will be using at least 5 pieces of this kit for that. Mainly because they are very straight forward and simple...I like that. There are a few things that I think could use some tweaking.

First is the shot of the whole kit.



What we see is the following:

1. Small softbox
2. Small beauty dish
3. Grid
4. Snoot with 2 add on grids
5. Bare bulb
6. Barn Doors

The part that mounts all of these to your flash is hidden inside the softbox. The one drawback is that each of the modifiers mounts to a piece that attaches to the flash head itself. So you can only use one of these modifiers at a time. They do however sell separately more mounts for the flash head. There are eight different versions of this part to fit different flash heads. You pick the one for your flash at the time of ordering.

So here is the main part that mounts on the flash.



It uses rubber around the part that slides over your flash head. Even though it was a snug fit I was able to fit it around my SB with velcro wrapped around it. It is a small reflector in and of itself and each of the six modifiers mount to this piece via the small little clamps that you see.

These could be problem #1. However they have somewhat addressed this and include four extra of these and they are replaceable...so that's a very good first step. Here is a closeup of the plastic clamp.



I'm going to do something a bit different here and show you the photo taken with each modifier. You can easily go here or here and see good photos of each piece.

First of the modifiers is the small softbox.



Here is a shot taken with the small softbox. In addition they include different colored diffusers, which to me is somewhat odd. Not sure why they decided to include something to change the color of the light...but only for the soft box. It would have been much better to give you a gel holder in the main piece that would allow you to use gels with all of the modifiers. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of these tiny softboxes that have become so popular lately. I think they are born out of convenience. There are a lot of products that will give you this type of light. This box is constructed with four small pieces of fiberglass rod which slide into the main mount. Then the soft fabric that makes up the box is stretched over the mount and the fiberglass rods. The diffusers simple wrap around the outside of the front of the box. They include a small velcro case to hold all of the softbox parts in.

Next we look at the beauty dish. This is about a cereal bowl sized dish.



This simply clips onto the the plastic clips on the front of the main mount. There is the dish part and a smaller flat piece of metal that is held on by a small arm. I took a couple detail photos of this.

Here is the front of the dish. You can also see some texture on the dish itself.



Now here is a shot from behind the dish.



You can see how the small arm holds the center part.

Next we move on to the grid.



You can see we have narrowed the light beam quite a bit and it shows in the photo above.

Next the snoot. Also note this does not collapse. It is a solid piece. Would have been nice if the sections slid into each other. Here is a shot taken with just the snoot itself.



Then the snoot fitted with the larger of the two grids that fit on the end of it.



Then fitted with the smaller of the two grids.



Now the bare bulb. Just a large plastic globe. I think this is my favorite part of this kit.



Shocking how something so simple can put off such nice light...and it is very versatile. I also found that I could use this in conjunction with the fabric of the softbox and a rubber band to mask off parts of the bulb. This should be fun to play with.

Now the barn doors. This is my second favorite. We have all messed around with flags on our strobes but nothing makes it easier than this....and honestly you can do things with these that you'd really have to mess with cardboard or foam flags to replicate. In addition it would be very easy to add some velcro to the outside of these and add larger flags. I think this piece is pretty versatile.



So the two pieces I was most interested in I do like. The bulb and the barn doors. Sometimes messing around with a velcro flag can be a pain to get it exactly where you want it. These simple doors make that process very easy and you can modify from there. What I like about the bulb is that it is BIG. Now that is not so great for portability, but it makes it a very interesting light source. I'm looking forward to playing around with the kit.



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What's in my bag post

So here it is, the obligatory what's in my bag post.


The bag:
Lowepro Mini Trekker - Have had this bag for a LONG time and honestly...I keep finding ways to fit stuff in it. Plus it has a flip down pouch to carry a tripod. I'm afraid getting a bag any bigger would not be good for my back. The amount of weight I can carry in this bag is astonishing.

Camera and Lenses:
Konica Minolta 7D - yep...still love it and haven't a reason to change...yet.
Sony 70-200/2.8
Tokina 28-70/2.8 ATX II Pro
Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX
Minolta 50/1.7
Sony 18-70 kit lens

I have other lenses...but these are the ones that usually travel in the bag.

Lighting:
Nikon SB28s with feet(3)
Promaster 7500 flash for KM
43" shoot through double fold
43" convertible double fold
Phottix transmitters (2)
Phottix receivers (4)
hot shoe adapter from KM shoe to standard hotshoe
hot shoe adapter from standard shoe to KM shoe
light meter
couple grids for the flashes
large black thing under the receivers is snoot that wraps around the flash
gels for the flashes

Misc:
usb cords
spare batteries for everything
misc CF cards 8gb sandisk, 4gb sandisk, 1 gb sandisk, 2gb transcend, 512mb promaster
gaffers tape, bungies, etc.
penny

If you are interested in more details on any of the stuff just ask. I'll be glad to post links to items or equipment.

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Mixing flash with ambient - Part 3

I know, I know it's been a while since the last update. Finally I have the next installment of mixing flash with ambient. I wanted a brighter sunny day and to be honest when we left...it was. When I say left...I mean left for the all of 60 second trip down the street to the train tracks. Then some clouds rolled in. Either way I wanted to do an overcast day also so that's what part 3 is all about. We are going to mix in flash on an overcast day. This is a good one since while overcast days give great diffused even lighting. Everyone always complains that the sky stinks and is blown out. Well now you'll see how to fix that problem!

Think about the sky as one huge light source. When you adjust your camera exposure for your subject, say a person, under that light source the source itself is going to be much brighter than what it is illuminating. For example if you have a lamp in your house. To look at the table it is lighting up it looks normal. But if you look directly at the bulb it's quite bright. This is why your sky always gets blown out (or turns all white) during overcast outside photos. It's one HUGE softbox. And when you take a picture of your light source directly...well...it gets all white. Unless you stop down and expose to show that sky. However if you do that...then your subject or the person you were photographing disappears and is now dark. That is what we are going to do today. Back and forth, each exposure...and brace yourself...because I think there are over 30 photos for this one. We will start with the correct ambient exposure with the blown out sky and end with the correct sky exposure with the dark subject. However, we will go everywhere in between. Including a nice balanced exposure of both. Which is exactly what balancing flash with ambient is all about.

The first thing we are going to do is let our camera figure out a nice even ambient exposure on our subject. You can do this many ways with your camera. I suggest this time that you start out in M mode. Set your ISO to 100. Set your shutter to your max sync speed as we talked about earlier. Then let your camera tell you what aperture you need to be at. You can do this by switching to shutter priority...however I think you'll see that you'll get used to your camera and M (manual) mode pretty quick.

Mine gave me a nice f4 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 100.



Notice the sky or lack of a sky. Next I'm going to add a single bare flash just off to my left. I got lucky (you get more and more lucky the more you do this) and got close by setting it to 1/4th power.



Little too hot though. Soooo to easily see by how much I'm not going to walk back and forth to the flash just yet. I'll stop down by 1 stop very easily and quickly on my camera and take another shot. This one I adjusted my f-stop to f5.6



Yep, that's it. So now I can walk over to the flash and drop it down to 1/8th power. Then back in my camera drop back down to f4.



FYI we have balanced flash with ambient already...so let's see what else we can do. I'm going to change 2 things here; f-stop to 5.6 and shutter down to 1/60th. What should we see???



Let's look at each one and see what happened in the photo above. Stopping down my aperture 1 stop will decrease the light I'm getting from my flash by 1 stop. It will also decrease my ambient exposure by 1 stop. Think about just those 2 things. Stopping down or using a smaller aperture will darken the overall photo. Both the flash output and the ambient. With flash and ambient we do have 2 light sources. So by stopping down 1 stop I've darkened the whole photo.

Dropping my shutter 1 stop will not effect my flash exposure(see part 2) but will bring back up the ambient exposure by 1 stop. So shutter does not effect our flash exposure below our sync speed (which we are staying below). It does effect our ambient light though. Cutting that shutter speed in half is 1 stop. So from 1/125 to 1/60th is half (close enough ok...)

Yes re-read that again if you are lost. It's part 3 so we are getting trickier. Part 2 had us just walking that shutter speed around adjusting the ambient. Now we are going to walk around with both our shutter and our aperture. So all I did was lower my flash exposure without effecting my ambient exposure.

Why did I do this? My flash exposure was fine. However I prefer that the flash add just enough light that it doesn't look like a big ol flash was hanging out next to the railroad tracks. The first photo...that's pretty clear. This last one...I've dropped that flash exposure down but kept the same ambient exposure.

Let's see what happens if I only change the aperture. Here is f5.6 1/125th.



Whole photo exposure dropped right. Both the flash exposure and the ambient. So by then dropping my shutter as I did above to 1/60th I got my ambient back to where I started.

So let's look at f4 at 1/125th again



and now let's change again to f5.6 at 1/60th.



Let's darken the background and see what we get. Leave it at f5.6 but take that shutter back to 1/125th.



Let's darken the whole scene by 1 stop. Take that aperture to f8. Remember this will effect my flash and the ambient.



Ok let's bring Amy's exposure back up a bit. I'm going to do that by upping the power on my flash to 1/8th power now.



Ok Amy is now back and the background (ambient) 1 stop darker. I had to cheat for this though. I could have just raised my shutter speed 1 stop to drop the ambient but keep my flash exposure. That would have done the same thing right? Yes it would have. If my camera had a flash sync speed of 1/250th of a second I could have done exactly that. But I don't...so I didn't. What I did was darken the whole photo by stopping down the aperture 1 stop then upping the power of my flash. Which achieved the same goal.

Uh oh...train is coming but my background is so dark now. Let's open it up just a bit...say 1/2 stop so we can see some of that train. f8 now at 1/80th.



Want to see a bit more of that train? Drop the shutter another 1/2 stop to 1/40th.



Ok we are walking around essentially the same exposure as we had earlier. Just with different settings. Let's drop our shutter once again so this time f8 @ 1/25th.



So we started our ambient exposure at f4 @ 1/125th. Now we are at f8 @ 1/25th. Hey wait...that's the same exposure. Yep. What I've done is bought myself some shutter room. Shutter room you say? At a shutter of 1/25th I can easily take my ambient light down by 2 stops. So now I get my aperture set for this and my flash exposure set for this. Which we have done by going through this process. Now I have all the control I need. My flash exposure is spot on. Now think back to part 2 and we can walk our shutter speed around depending on how much background we want.

Let's do it! I'm going to walk up the shutter one stop at a time. that was 1/25th now I'll take it to 1/50th.



Now 1/100th



Now 1/160th (my max sync) 1/2 stop.



There you go. We started out with a blown out sky and a good ambient exposure on Amy. Now we have a good exposure on Amy and either a blown out sky or a dark sky and everywhere in between. Now you know how to balance the 2 lights, ambient and flash. Let's walk a few more steps to really step it up a notch.

We've got that harsh bare flash light on our beautiful Amy. Let's soften that light up by making it a bit larger. I'll add a shoot through umbrella and pump up the power 1 stop on the flash to 1/4 power. Everything else stays the same. f8 @ 1/160th.



The biggest thing to notice is the harsh shadow under her chin has disappeared. Look back at the other photos....all of them. However the lighting is a bit flat. By flat I mean we are not getting much even in the form of soft shadows to add some depth. I'm going to raise the umbrella up higher than it is and point it a bit down at Amy.



Now you'll notice we have a bit more light on her hair. Things like the wrinkles in her shirt have a bit more dimension.

Now let's talk color....it's flat. Let's face it...that grey/blue sky...hmmmm what to do. We'll take a CTO gel (we talked about this in part 2 also) and add it to the flash. I'm going to slightly turn up the power of the flash once again to account for the light lost through the gel. Here we have orange Amy.



Somewhere in the moving around of things (meaning me moving and changing things and Amy getting bored our light is a bit off. So now I'm going to move it around a bit to get a tad more light on the left side of Amy's face.



There we go. Now let's bring back a bit of that background by dropping our shutter speed. This time to 1/60th.



Ok, so the full CTO orange just isn't cutting it here. Because really Amy isn't this orange. I don't think we are fooling anyone that this is sunset either since nothing else in the photo has a warm glow. So the reason for the CTO gel was so that I could now adjust my white balance. I was set at daylight/flash at 5500k. Now I'm going to adjust that to 4350k. This will cool down the photo. Cooling is blue. The sky will get bluer Amy will come back to being closer to normal color.



Not bad, but I think we can go a bit more. Let's try 3800k.



Yep. That's what I want. Goodbye grey sky...at least we can tell here is some blue in there! Then I got lucky and a train came by...timing is everything.



Ok, ok...setup shots. These ones were basic though. Here is the shot with the umbrella.



This is what the bare flash looked like at the beginning.



Ohhhh that's right. I promised you the opposite end. Great sky...bad Amy exposure.



But doesn't Amy look about 10 times better with some light?



All I did for those 2 shots...first one...wide angle lens I threw on for the setup shot. Then take off my radio trigger from the hot shoe (basically turn off the flash). My exposure is already all set for that nice blue sky. Then to add my light back to Amy all I have to do is turn my flash back on. Don't forget...once you have your exposure dialed in. Try some different angles and poses. Move around and take more photos.

I know...this one was long...with a lot of photos. Hopefully those of you starting out it's just what you need to get out there and follow along and try it out! I literally took you through every photo...step by step. Hopefully you can see the progression.

Not to worry. I will be doing more on mixing flash with ambient. I will also be doing more on light modifiers and color balance. Hopefully sooner...rather than later!

On to mixing flash with ambient - Part 4

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CowboyStudio.com 16" softbox kit

Light, it's what we use to create photos with. Without it everything inside the frame is black. No exceptions. There is so much going on in terms of light modifiers right now it's crazy. Personally, I think a lot of it is marketing B.S. There is so much marketing material out there telling you how their companies light modifier is better than the next. Honestly....a 1' square light is a 1' square light. Or should I say a 12"x12" softbox is a 12"x12" softbox as long as the light distribution is even. That's it. The only other thing you are getting is portability and quality of build.

There are more than a few web sites online that show how different light modifiers look on the same scene. I'd say they are interesting....but all the same. All the same in that the results are all the same. I plan on doing the same thing here eventually. Time seems to be my problem lately. However in some of the testing I've done out of curiosity...it seems none of the modifiers I have change the physical properties of light. Shocker huh?

So you can read online about the minute details between all these light modifiers...then I want you to go look at some of your favorite photos. You know what, the minute differences in those modifiers mean diddly squat. When I say minute difference I do mean minute. I'm not talking about the difference between a 60" softbox and a flash head. I mean the difference of choking up 5" on an umbrella on a head shot. Or the fact that you left your strobe zoomed to 24mm instead of 18mm. In the end the difference is negligible.

One of the main things you'll notice is the light loss however. That can be very important. The difference of losing 2 stops of light versus 1 stop of light can be pretty significant especially if you are using a small flash.

Ok, ok all of this comes because I recently got a small softbox from www.cowboystudio.com. It's price was very reasonable at less than $60 for the softbox, mount, carry case and light stand. It's what I thought would be a very good way to play around with a soft box for the beginners out there. Or a decent addition even for the pros. What it is not is a large soft light. It is only 16"x16" so that is your light size/source. It's going to be a harder light which means more defined shadows than say a 40" umbrella. However you will have more control over the light than you will with that umbrella...shoot through or bounce.


So I really think that is where the softbox differs from the umbrellas, control. Because of how they are setup they control the light coming from them. Some even have a slight flagging if you will. Much like the one you see here. There is about 2" of material that protrudes out from the diffusion panel. That acts like a short snoot for the light controlling it's spill from the edges.

So here are some photos for you. First the kit all zipped up.



Then removing the small bag for the softbox and the brackets from the bag.



Then removing the softbox from it's bag.



A flash mounted to the bracket.



Then the softbox mounted on the bracket.



Then the front of the softbox.



The photo of the flash being fired inside of it is at the top of this post. Here is a shot of it from the back being fired.



Then a photo showing the spill of light from it.



Finally the catchlight it creates....in a dogs eye at least. (sigh)



So if you want a smallish controllable light source, there are a few of these out there for purchase. Don't think the cowboystudio one is the only one. Alzo makes one, Lastolite makes one and there are a few out there on ebay. What I will say is that they will all do the exact same thing if they are the same size.

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Replacing ambient with flash

This time we are going to talk about how to replace ambient with flash but to make it look/feel like ambient. In other words we are going to use our flash in a way that doesn't say "this photo was taken with a flash!" I think part of learning how to do this is really learning how to master using your flash. Because when you can learn how to exactly replicate another light with one of your lights....well then you are well on your way to creating light any way you want it. Plus this is great practice since you can practice doing it around your house and with just about any light.

I continue shooting after shooting the shots for the last post about mixing flash with ambient. Same place same spot but now we are going to change the shooting position. I choose a position that I would use if I was only using available light. The shot with started with in mixing flash with ambient part 2 was back lit for Amy leaving her face in the dark. So I moved around and turned the lamp into my main light.



So that is a 1/2 second exposure at f5.6. It's ok as it is. I turned Amy into the light and other than it being a tad over exposed it looks good. However at a 1/2 a second she needs to stay pretty still to get a clear image. The camera was on a tripod so that helps a lot at shutter speeds that low. So what if we wanted to make an image with this same look but do it with our flash? Let's walk through that process.

The first step I took was to fire a bare flash on a stand just behind and under the lamp. The setup shown here.



and now the first shot.



So here is the bare flash 1/160th of a second (sync speed) and f5.6 with the flash on 1/64th and gelled CTO.

Well that's a bit underexposed lets turn up the flash power and try agian.



Not bad it's less light than the ambient exposure we took but also gives a mood of it's own. One more stop on the flash.



There we go 1/160th 5.6 flash at 1/8th power. We've come pretty close to replicating that lamp and we are now at 1/160th of a second and we are using a strobe freeze any movement. That was pretty easy right?

How about we got a few steps further now. Can we keep the look of that lamp but make the photo even better? Let's pull the lamp out of there (only because of space) and add in an umbrella on the flash.



Umbrella added and bumped the power even more to 1/4th. Underexposed.



There we go. That's with the flash at full power, full CTO gel, and white shoot through umbrella. It's a nice soft flattering light, it sets a nice mood and it really looks like there could have just been a lamp there lighting this scene.

After looking at it I thought the photo could use just a bit more light on the left side of her face. So very simply and very quickly I added in a reflector to help add a little light over there. That looked like this.



Here is the setup of the reflector and the umbrella.



So there you have it. Here are some of the tricks. First replicate the direction of the light. Believe it or not direction tells the viewer a lot of things about the light in the photograph. Subconsciously their brain is telling them where the light in the photo is coming from. That's why when you see straight on camera flash lit photos...you can recognize them right away. Second is try to get close to the size of the original light source. In my case a pretty large lamp shade on that lamp. For how close it was to her that's a nice sized light source. Much larger than my little strobe head. Then don't be afraid to amp up the photo just enough. By just enough I mean enough that it's not noticeable to your average viewer. Adding in that fill really helped give her face some dimension. However it doesn't distract from the original intent.

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Mixing flash with ambient - Part 2

I'll admit I really wanted to setup something much more than grabbing Amy after the kids went to bed and saying sit there. But I wanted to write this and well...that's just how it went down! Luckily she was a sport about it and was fairly patient with me as I took frame after frame and kept some notes so I could write this. So here is the first step in adding in flash to an ambient exposure. There are a lot of photos inside this one so follow along in painful detail. Yes if you are an experienced strobist this will probably bore you. If you are starting and literally want to see the frame by frame progress of setting up lights hopefully this will help.

So I wanted to start basic and I wanted that to be your standard in house 60w lightbulb environment. So 2 60w light bulbs in this case. One on each side of the couch on the table. Those are the only existing lights I had on. The first thing I did was take a full auto exposure photo with my Point & Shoot Panasonic Lumix(FX30). I wanted to show what an all auto P&S would do in this situation.



Then I snapped a photo of the gear I would be using. Minolta 7D, Nikon SB28 flash, Phottix radio trigger and receiver, light stand with flash umbrella holder on top, wescott 43" umbrella.



Next I setup my camera on a tripod using a typical SLR KIT lens. You know the cheap one. I also put my camera on P mode or auto and let it figure out the exposure. It wanted .5 second at f3.5. I left a pretty wide angle 18mm so that you can see what is going on with the lighting around the whole scene as things change.



Let's see...that looks...um....horrible. Great light on the back and side of her head couch is dark, the table is partially exposed correctly and part of it is blow out (all white from where the light is hitting it creating a hot spot). So now lets start to add light to balance in with the ambient. Now I switched to Manual mode on my camera and transferred those P mode settings .5sec shutter (less than my sync) and f3.5. I also left the camera on Auto WB for now. We are starting simple with the least amount of variables. The camera is also on ISO 100. Low for the lighting situation we have here but fine for this tutorial. Also I'm going to leave the aperture at f3.5 for the duration of this also.

Next step is to add in a flash. I setup the flash on the light stand and took a setup photo so you can see where everything is.



The flash is set on 1/64th power pointed at Amy nothing else done to it.



So now at least there is light on her face. That's good....but it's blue light! Ohhhh the camera is on auto white balance. It chose a white balance of 3750K. I'm not going to get into the light color too much at this point other than to say the flash color is clearly not matching the 60w light bulb or tungsten color. Flash blue, Tungsten orange. The bottom line is unless you like that blue light you are going to have to change it's color. I did that with a CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel or colored piece of plastic in front of the flash. Then retook the photo.



Same light, different color.

Now all we have done to this point was add light into an already programmed via the super smart auto mode photo. We have mixed flash with ambient. See, wasn't that easy? If you look between the original shot with no flash and the shot above you can see how much and exactly what light the flash added. Really the flash is a fill light at this point. Which means that the lamp is still providing the majority of the light in the photo and the flash is just adding light at a level below the lamp.

Now, let's control the ambient. I now turned my shutter speed up to 1/125th of a second and retook the photo with the same settings on the flash.



Now you can much more clearly see how much light that flash is adding. The lamp is still lit in the photo but only enough to show that it's a lamp and lighting some of the objects below it. Now we can control a few things to change how this will look. Even though we can do this multiple ways of which I'll talk about they will all essentially do the same thing which is change the lighting ratio. Or that ratio between the flash and the lamp. If I want to keep the light I now have from my lamp (very little) and add light from the flash. So I'll turn up the power on my flash a bit to 1/16th power.



As you can see we have much more light on her now. Simple right?

The next thing I did was add a light modifier into the equation. I'm going to talk about modifiers in detail in another blog post but I wanted you to see what it was going to do for us here. I added a white shoot through umbrella. I also turned up the power on the flash even more to 1/4 power!



Notice that I lost 2 stops by adding the umbrella. There are 2 reasons for this. I lost about a stop just from the umbrella itself. Then I lost another stop when I had to move the light further away from Amy so the umbrella wasn't in the photo. Turned up the power again, so here we are now at 1/2 power.



Now that's better. Ok so now we are clearly changing/adjusting the light from our flash in our photo. That lamp is still just showing that it's a lamp and not adding much light into this photo. So let's drop our shutter speed back down to the original exposure.



Now our ratio is much more balanced. Both light sources are complimenting each other and we can clearly now see there is a face in the photo in addition to letting the lamp add light to the photo. It's adding the exact same amount of light that it did in the very first photo without any flash at all. All we have done was played around with the light from the flash and then came back to the original exposure for the lamp. Now let's increase our shutter speed by 1 stop at a time (doubling it each time) and watch what happens to the ambient light. Tip: Keep your eye on the light the table lamp is spilling on the wall. That is showing you how much light from the lamp is making it into the exposure.


@ 1/4th shutter


@ 1/8th shutter


@ 1/15th shutter


@ 1/20th shutter (not a full stop)


@ 1/40th shutter


@ 1/80th shutter


@ 1/160th shutter

So there you go. That is literally walking that shutter speed up one stop at a time to slowly change how much ambient light is in the photo. Earlier we changed the power on the flash to adjust the amount of light in the photo from the flash. Now we changed the amount of ambient light in the photo via the shutter speed. Our constants, the aperture at f3.5 and the ISO at 100. So which photo do you pick? All of them are a mix. None of them are the "wrong" exposure, just different.

We have walked through adjusting the ambient, we even threw in changing the light with a modifier. Let's change our light one more time to see what happens. I took the umbrella off and turned the flash head almost straight up and bounced the light off of the ceiling. Setup looked like this.



The flash power was set to 1/2power and the shutter speed @1/160th.



That actually worked pretty well and to me gave me a pretty nicely lit photo but a little dim. There is only a hint of the fact that the lamp is actually on. I then cranked up the flash to full power.



There we go, that lit Amy up pretty well....but we have lost the fact that we are mixing with the ambient light and we are now overpowering what little light was coming from the lamp at 1/160th of a second.

I've shown about 20 photos so far and to be honest none of them are wrong. We are talking about mixing ambient light with flash exposure. The mix is up to you. How much ambient and how much flash....completely up to your taste and/or the feel of the photograph. Those ceiling bounce exposures...sure the lamp was on...but really how much light was it contributing to the photo...very little...so I guess we were mixing with Ambient...but not much. You have now walked through the whole process. From all ambient to all flash and just about everywhere in between.

These were all straight out of camera JPGs with no post processing or photoshopping done to change anything. Including not cropping out my toes in the photo of the gear...sorry about that.

On to mixing flash with ambient - Part 3

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Mixing flash with ambient - Part 1

Since the question I have been asked most lately is how to mix strobe or flash with ambient light. I'm going to focus a few articles on how to do that. I'm also going to get at the results in a round about way because this topic is fairly interesting. I say that not because it's difficult. In fact, it's very easy. However I think the concept may be difficult since the questions I've received have been pretty diverse and I think the best way is to try and simplify the topic.

The photo above is actually a mixture of things carefully put together to achieve what to the average viewer looks like nice even light. It's really anything but that. I'm not going to go into detail in this post because I'm working on the details in another blog post. What I wanted to do is follow up on my previous post about thinking about mixing light.

If you sat down and thought about this long enough you might have come to realize that talking about mixing flash with "ambient" is really no different that mixing flash with flash. Whoaaa, what? Flash with Flash? Yes. I want you to think of "ambient" no matter where it is coming from as another flash. It's just a flash that you can't control the power on. Let's think about this in a few different scenarios.

First inside, let's start small. A room with no windows and just a single table lamp. Regular 60w tungsten light bulb. Tungsten is your standard average everyday 60w light bulb. If you have ever photographed one it comes out a bit orange. For photography it really doesn't give off much light. Say 1/60th at f2.8 depending on how close your subject is. So there you go, that's all the "ambient" light that's in the room. Soooo...that is your first strobe. Now just as if you were building an exposure with all strobes, start from here. What do you want to do? Use the lamp as a key or main light and fill in? Use the lamp as a fill light and use a strobe as a main or key light? Or just let that lamp burn in the background to give the feel of the room while using strobes to gently light the subject. It's that latter one that I think most people refer to when they talk about mixing flashes and ambient. But you see that mixing the two really can mean a lot of things. To be honest, if you've ever taken a "snapshot" style photo with a flash before....you've mixed flash and ambient. In fact mixing flash and ambient is done pretty frequently. You just might not realize that is what you are doing. Any type of on camera fill flash outdoors is mixing flash with ambient.

So here is a thought process to start with. Start that exposure with the ambient light. Get an exposure in your camera that shows the ambient as you would like it to appear in the final photo. Then and only then will we add in more light. The only constraint you will have is that you can not go above that magic sync speed we talked about in Beginning Strobist BASICS. So stay at your 1/200 or lower shutter speed while making that ambient exposure.

In the series of posts to come we will walk exposure for exposure through balancing flash with ambient light in many different situations. We will start small and simple and build as we go. You will soon find out that you can mix in your flash with just about any ambient light. We are even going to talk about modifying the ambient in some situations also. The photo above has a light modifier in place to control the sun a bit.

On to Mixing flash with ambient - Part 2

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Next up balancing flash with ambient

Next on the list is a subject a few of you have emailed me about. That is how to balance your flash exposure with the ambient exposure. First though I want you to think about this. Forget all the technical details though. Don't think flash settings, etc. Think about an overview of what you will be doing. Basically adding flash to ambient or the other lights around you. That could mean the sun, that could mean the florescent lights in an office building. That being said, you've may have already done this and not even known it. Ever add on-camera fill flash outside? That's balancing flash with ambient. However I'd like you to think about something specific you would like to accomplish. Then we'll make it happen. Feel free to email me your ideas or leave them in the comments. I may just use one of them for the step by step walk through.
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What does it all mean?

Your photography that is, what does it mean? Been scouring the web and reading a lot of speculation on "where are things going" "what's going to happen next?" "Is photography fading?" the list goes on. The question is, who cares? And what you should be asking yourself is does the future of photography mean anything to you? I am seeing so many people get caught up in the who, what, where of photography that it is boggling. There are some people that take things far too seriously. Yet you can follow along with many great photographers that put their whole lives online for the world to follow along. In addition all of them do this as their full time profession and they are good, no they are GREAT at it. Plus they also allow little old me to read about their travels and experiences and learn along with them. We are living in a world currently where information travels at the speed of light. You can learn almost anything you want from the comfort of your own home. However that learning should never be substituted for real life experience. Sitting in front of that computer all day may make you smarter but will not increase your life experience by much at all.


We've all heard the term internet jockey. If not let me sum up. It's that guy that spends all his time reading about what others do on the internet and then claims to be an expert and hangs around in internet forums all day telling others what to do. I had one of those "ah ha" moments one day when I read someone joking that most of the experience on the forum was in the guys that never posted but that followed along occasionally in case anything interesting came up. Probably pretty true. Then you have those who feel it is their duty to put down every new guy that enters the interweb with a dumb question. Oh right...there are no dumb questions. Just mean people who want to make themselves feel better by putting others down. Man that's not what life is about. They are like little kids who's attention can't be kept for much longer than the next new post on a forum. What is shocking is those that get caught up in all the technical aspects of photography and who has what camera, who got the most expensive lens and who started this or that website. I guess in a sense that is photography also. I mean really photography is a pretty large subject in and of itself. It's just that's not the photography I know and it's not the photography I grew up with. Oh and I have a suggestion for all of you that love to respond to the new guy with the post that reads as follows: "Maybe next time you should try the search feature." Well you know what, maybe next time send them a link on how to use the search feature. It might be more helpful. You never know, they might just be new.

Some of us have full time jobs that are not related to photography. We are photographers because we love it. Don't get me wrong the professionals do too, but they rely on it to put food on the table. They love it in a way I don't know if I'll ever understand. If you read any of their blogs however you'll know....it's more of a passion than a livelihood. I highly doubt a few of them would stray far from their camera even if they didn't make they money they do. Great example is Zach Arias. Follow along his blog, watch his movie. What is it all about? While watching the movie you'll realize you already know he is hopeless. No not hopeless in a bad way, hopeless in the best way. He has a passion and a love for something...he'll never give it up. So wonderful to read about someone who embraces their passion and just keeps going. Especially to see someone so grounded with his family and his profession and how he merges it all together. I'm sure he is one of those people that after recording those late night critiques with his wife sits back and realizes how lucky he is. Because really, who stays up to 2am with their pregnant wife to create a video for their blog about photography to HELP SOMEONE ELSE! Oh and Zach, here is a "snapshot" of my first son at 3 minutes old. Don't forget to take a picture. :-) He will be six this year and I still look at this picture to remind me of how little he once was.

Funny thing is I created this blog to try to help others also. There are photographers out there with all levels of skill and with strengths in different areas. Some can see composition like no other, some light, some color, some layers. Some see all of it at once. Those are the great ones. Some of us need help, we try we learn we practice. We follow along with the greats to see how they work. In my effort to give back I got smacked in the face in a way I did not expect. I had posted up a link to the blog in the Flickr strobist group and wow what a response I got. Starting with there is already a blog for this and ending with that I'm a condescending pretender that is just trying to increase traffic on my blog. Um ok. Shocked....to say the least. Whoever you were you didn't scare me off in the least. In fact you only reinforced that some people can get pretty bullied around in places like that and maybe a little quiet corner of the web to relax and learn without the pressure is a good thing.

I've read those forums and watched the posts. There are very few that offer up the real details a new photog needs for help. They look at the end results some of which are photo edited to hell and back and can't figure out for the life of them how to get there. It's frustrating, I've been there. I used to write for an online ezine (remember when they were called that?) for Jeeps. My articles were basic, very basic. I took photos of every step of a product install and even circled the bolts that needed removed, etc. People loved it. Hell I even created a story about how to change your own motor oil. So I guess I've been a condescending jerk for a long time now. There were people that had never done it and didn't have someone to show them. There was no way in heck they were going to ask in the forums how to change their own oil. What kind of wrench to get, etc. Does that mean they didn't deserve to learn?

I never started this blog to be condescending or to even for a minute think I was above anyone in this world. There are many lessons my father taught me that I'll never forget. One of the strongest being that NO ONE is better than me....and NO ONE is beneath me. That I could learn something from everyone. Yea that last one....everyone out there in this world knows something I do not. A fact. There are billions of cameras out there and to be honest I look at those photographers, picture takers, whatever you want to call them the same way. There are none that are better and none that are worse. Why? Because they all take different images than me and I can learn something from every one of them.

I don't really think the few readers that I do have really thought I was here trying to put them down. The feedback that I have gotten was very positive and it seems there were a few of you out there that enjoyed reading the blogs and learned a few things with me along the way. So no...I'm not going to stop.

However I think, like most things in life, what happened turned out to be a positive. Really made me think about what I was writing about and why. See ever since I picked up my first camera I loved taking pictures. To be honest I take them for one reason and one reason only, me. Really, that's it. Well kind of. When I see someone have a reaction to my photo...that's for me. It makes it worth it makes me want to take more photos and to reach more people. There is no secret to this and I've said this statement for MANY years and you can quote me. "You can take the absolute worst photo technically but if that photo can bring emotion to just one viewer. That is a successful photograph. Period." That's it really. It's what I love about photography, it's what I love about looking at others photos. Come on, you know that when you are looking at someone's work...and it's good....you almost can't stop looking at it.

This isn't about what category your photograph falls in, what flickr group you took it for. It's about the photographs themselves. Remove them from all the words and other crap around them and just look at the photos. They really do speak for themselves. The good ones need no explanations. The photo on the left. Yea that one's for me. I remember that day perfectly. That's not sunset, that's sunrise in Moab, Utah and it was chilly the February morning. That guy standing at the front of that Jeep is a good friend of mine Mike. We spent a week down there with other friends from the internet. Back in the good old days of email mailing lists (It was Feb of 97). Point is I don't care how old the photo is. How much grain it has. The fact that it was scanned from who knows where I have to be honest I don't even know what camera it was taken with. A disposable for all I remember. The photo means a lot to me. I look at it and can take me right back to that day. That's what photography is about to me.

The market right now is saturated with so much marketing about equipment and processes and printers and all of it just clouds people minds to forget what is really important about photos....THE PHOTO! How many times have you seen written that no one remembers the details of what a photo was taken with, just the photo. Who hasn't seen the photo of Sharbat Gula also knows as Afghan Girl? You don't look at that photo, it looks at you. How many of you know what kind of camera took it? Digital? Film? Really, who cares?

Photography is not about what you use or who started it first it's about the photos. I'm wondering how this got lost all so recently and I really don't know but can only blame the mass marketing machines out there trying to sell all kinds of weird items claiming to make your photography better. I mean that's what it's all about these days, making money and being number one. Apparently having the most blog hits must somehow rank up there but I'm not sure how that really means anything either. I mean really...which lens IS better? I say it's the one out there taking photos.

There are some really wonderful and amazing photographers out there willing to share their experiences. You can learn from them in fact you can learn a lot from them. The losers will be easy to spot. They will be the conceited ones that will attempt to tell you that you suck and that you shouldn't be doing this. That only they have the vision and ability and you'll never match their level. Bull Pucky! Here is what really happened. All this technology that you can get lost in has also leveled the playing field. Back in the day not only did you have to be pretty damn creative but you had to be amazing technically also. There weren't photoshop plugins for skin smoothing and "actions" to do just about anything you want to your photos. Man if you only knew what we went through back in the day of the non-digital darkroom! Every time I see that dodge tool in photoshop I can still picture my little piece of wire with paper on it. My point is that technology has put the creative vision first and the ability to capture it second. Taking an accurately exposed photo most cameras can do for you. I've seen the few with the "cheapest" digital SLR and the "worst" all in one zoom take the most amazing photos. They are artists who really don't need the latest and greatest gadgets to make good images. Oh and they are also the ones forming weird stuff out of household objects to manage light. That's the person that hangs the white bed sheet over the sliding glass doors to diffuse the light coming through then looks around and grabs a white place mat to use as a reflector. That's the photographer that's really just thinking about that end result. The photo that's in their head. Not I just got this cool new thing that fastens 8 flashes to a bracket that shoots through a tube into a piece of plastic now what can I take a photo of with it? huh? huh? huh? David Hobby's Strobist site walks you through some pretty basic gear and with that gear you can make amazing photos. The whole strobist movement was all about taking your show on the road. Really...get the heck OUT there and take some photos. Now that you are packing heat (light) it really doesn't matter when you go. You can do it 24/7 if you want. Don't get caught up in all the cool things to attach to them, get caught up on just getting out there and shooting some frames.

In fact you want an assignment. Here it goes. Come up with an idea for a photo. Something that is your passion. The most important thing to you. Write it down. In every detail you can imagine in your head. If you can draw, draw it. If not write it out. Let it sit for 1 day then re-read it. Change it, keep it the way it is just let yourself think about that idea rather than run out and do it right away. You'll see pretty quickly you're not thinking about your gear as much now. You are trying to figure out how to get what you want. Love cars? Mustangs maybe? Call the local Mustang car club. See if you can find someone with that favorite of yours that wants some cool photos of their car. You get my point. Make a connection with someone or some thing. Make your photo matter to you then get out and make it. I promise you that if you get that photo...of that thing you love...and it's just the way you wanted it...you really won't even care how you got there.


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How to get good at guessing

Here is how you too can get your flash exposure almost dead on very quickly....and it's EASY! There are three (3) things you need to look at. First f-stop. Second the flash's distance to the object you are taking the photo of. Third the power set on the flash itself. If you can get baseline understanding of these 3 things you can come real close to guessing the power you will need. Plus I even have a few more tricks along the way.

Let's get what I call a baseline.

Forget ambient light for a moment we are just talking flash. So set your camera to take a complete black photo inside a dark room. Actually let's use these settings from my other blog @iso 200, f16 at 1/160th of a second. I'm pretty sure that exposure will leave you with a black frame indoors(if not where ARE you living?). Now we are going to put our flash 3 feet from the object we want to light. I put a chair in front of a door, flash 3 feet from chair, set it on 1/2 power and took a frame:


Then I dropped the power on the flash 2 stops down to 1/8th power:


Guess what, at iso200, F16 (shutter speed does not effect how much light from your flash gets to the film or sensor) my SB28 set to 1/2 power and 3 feet from a subject I will always get "that much light" inside, outside, upside down. Period. Of course that exposure changes slightly depending on what you are photographing. In this case a white chair which reflects a lore more light than a black chair would have. However you get my point. Those settings will be consistent....always. So if you have a baseline you can easily move in full stop directions with it. So if 1/2 power gives me a good exposure at 3 feet with f16. Then 1/8 power will give me the SAME exposure at 3 feet with f8. Drop the flash one full stop, open the aperture 1 full stop. Or go the other way. Go to f22 and raise the flash to full power 1/1. This is all assuming 3 feet from your subject. I doubt you will always want to work with your flash at 3 feet so what about distance?

I'm going to quote from scantips.com:

Light intensity falls off rapidly with distance from its source. This is called the Inverse Square Law, which says the intensity varies with the square of the flash-to-subject distance, this way:

2x the distance is 1/4 as bright, and 1/2 the distance is 4x brighter (2 stops)
3x the distance is 1/9 as bright, and 1/3 the distance is 9x brighter (8x is 3 stops)
4x the distance is 1/16 as bright, and 1/4 the distance is 16x brighter (4 stops)
etc.

Inverse Square Law is just a fancy name for a rather simple concept. Think of a flashlight - as the beam travels farther away from the source, the beam spreads out to illuminate a larger area, but becoming more dim with distance. All light spreads this way, from your flashlight, your photo flash, your table lamp, and your corner street light spreads this way too. All we are saying is that the light covers a larger area as it travels and spreads out. The greater area results in less light intensity per unit of area, simply because the light is the same power distributed over a larger increasing area.

Ohhhh we have just learned that distance is NOT our friend. So at twice the distance or 6 feet we are 1/4 as bright. So that 1/2 power shot above at f16. Drop that f-stop all the way down to f5.6 to get the same exposure at 6 feet.

So there you have it. Get a baseline, bring a calculator and... I know, I know. I'm starting to lose a few of you here. That's OK. Practice is what will solve this complicated math problem for you. If you practice this I promise you with time you'll look at the situation and take a pretty good guess of where you will need to be. Here is why. Generally your ISO will be fairly consistent. Plus that's the easiest one to figure in terms of full stops. 100, 200, 400, 800. All full stop jumps. So let's say you usually leave your camera at iso200. That variable is stable. Now you have the 3 I mentioned. Get a few shots under your belt at f8 with YOUR flash on different power levels and distances and you will be in the ball park. So know what your flash will give you at 3 feet at f8 with different power settings. Then just do the math.

What about all those other cool things we can attach to our flashes? Just remember. Go back to your baseline. Take that f8, 3 foot exposure with your flash at 1/8th power and then add your light modifier (umbrella, softbox, grid, snoot,gel, etc) then retake. What happened? Lose a stop? 1/2 stop? Now you know how much light loss you have and add that into your equation.

Don't let yourself get thrown off. What you learn by doing this will always be consistent. Once you get outside the house things do not change. Take your camera and flash into a field on a bright sunny day and you will still get that much light from your flash at 3 feet, 1/160th, f8, 1/8th power on the flash. So wait you are saying that the sun is overpowering your shot at those settings? Hmmm by how much? 3 stops? That's OK, take your aperture up to f22 and raise your flash power to 1/1. Bye, bye sun...well OK now we equal the sun.

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How to get wired for off camera flash

So now we want to add this awesome oh so read about off camera flash. First, you need a way to "trigger" the flash. By trigger I mean the camera needs to tell the flash exactly when to flash so that the light from it makes it into the photo. We are talking about 1/250th of a second here, pretty quick. There are a few ways that can be accomplished. First is with a cable. Some cameras already have this socket on the camera body itself. This socket is known as the PC sync socket. It is shown above.

Then you need a flash with the same type of socket on it's body.


but wait, this is a Nikon flash and I have a Konica Minolta (now Sony) camera. That's right. When setting things up to basically just "trigger" a flash brands and types do not matter. That flash is a Nikon SB28. In fact I have 3 of them.

Put it all together and you have this:


Yes I know the cord is very short and that's a good point. I did this so you can see how it connects together. What you do need to know is that you can get that cable in a multitude of lengths. The longer the cable the further you can put your flash from the camera.

So what if your camera doesn't have this socket? What if your flash doesn't have this socket? There are very simple solutions for that too! Here is what is called a hot shoe adapter.


This particular one is for my Minolta hot shoe camera. Which is different than well...all other cameras. This particular adapter can be purchased Here @Gadget Infinity Or if you have a regular hot shoe look at This one @MPEX. Both of these will add a PC sync socket to your camera's hot shoe. OH and BTW both of these will also double and add a PC socket to your FLASH!


You can purchase the Male to Male PC sync cords at either of those two online stores along with Flash Zebra. So there you have 3 online resources for purchasing what you need....and they are pretty cheap too! Remember though if your flash and your camera have the PC sync socket you don't need the adapters, just the cable.

Ohhh so you want to get fancy? Don't like carrying that wire? Tripping on it? How about wireless? There is a lot of discussion about wireless out there and there are surprisingly a lot of solutions. From very cheap to very expensive. I'm going to cover just the "simple." The very well known in the industry Pocket Wizards are pretty much a standard for a lot of professionals. If you want the simple of simple look at the plus IIs. The least complicated of the pocket wizards.

So how do these wireless triggers, or sometimes called radio triggers work? Very simple actually. The take the signal that comes out of the PC sync port on your camera and send it over the air like a cell phone to the receiver that is then attached to the flash. To make this simpler the transmitter for your camera usually just mounts in your hot shoe. One cable eliminated! Here it is:


Now mine are not Pocket Wizards. Mine are a much cheaper variation that I got off of ebay and can be found on other online stores. They are made by Phottix. I'm not going to get into the technical details of all the off-brand weird named but all made in the same place electronic triggers. In fact do yourself a favor and stay away from getting into the details with these things. I will suggest that you get the Pocket Wizards unless you are on a budget. Why? Because a lot of people have them and you can find a lot of information about them on the web.

So here is a photo of how the receiver attaches to my flash:


I just used some velcro to attach the receiver to the side of the flash and oh there is that short Male to Male PC sync cable going from the receiver to the flash. Also note there is a hot shoe on the receiver that I could also just slide the flash onto (eliminating the need for the cable) if I wanted to. At this point you just want to get everything working.

Now the simple part. Turn the switch to the on position on the receiver and take your photos. The radio triggers I have take me to about 100 feet in distance. I've never gone further so I don't know how much further they will go. You have now just eliminated the wire! Also get a receiver for each off camera flash you have and the trigger will fire them off all at the same time!

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Beginning strobist BASICS

By basics I really mean basics. Reading some of the groups out there I see there is a huge gap between readers. Some have been fiddling with this stuff forever and taking apart a flash to add a PC sync socket is a mere half hours time. Others...PC what?

So for those of you that want to get into this off camera flash using older non automatic flashes hopefully this should help you out a bit.

First let's talk about your camera. To be honest to do this you don't need a fancy camera. What you do need is a camera that has a full Manual mode. Usually the "M" mode on your dial or in your menus. What I won't cover in this is how to use that M mode on your camera. There are lots of other online resources for that. What you need to come back with is knowledge of how to make a properly exposed photo with available light using Manual mode on your camera. Once you can do that now you are ready to add flash to that photo.

Let's walk through this together. Before I do that we must talk about 1 thing that will be different for everyone. First thing you need to remember when dealing with manual flash (remember this is no auto TTL iTTL eTTL nada) is that you will be stuck with your camera's highest sync speed. What does this mean? This is the fastest shutter speed you can use with manual flash. Every camera has one and it is usually listed in the specs for your camera. No reason to go into details as to why, just know that you can not use a faster shutter speed than what is listed for your camera while using off camera manual flashes. In my case it's 1/160th of a second on my Konica Minolta 7D. Depending on your camera more often this is either 1/200 or 1/250th of a second.

So back to our experiment. I walked outside with my camera, set my camera's shutter speed to my max sync speed 1/160th. Then figured out my aperture for a "correct" exposure on my truck's wheel. I know very exciting. So here is the first shot with no flash, no nothing. ISO 200, 1/160th, F8



Now, what I'm going to do is reduce my exposure (or darken the photo) by 2 full stops. Typically you can do this in 2 ways; Shutter and Aperture. However to reduce my exposure using my shutter speed I'd have to go to a faster shutter speed. Since I'm already as my maximum sync speed I can't do that. So I use my aperture and tighten it down 2 stops. I was at F8, next is F11 and finally F16. So now I'm at ISO 200, 1/160th, F16



Ok so far I hope you are still with me. If I've lost you to this point, don't worry. You need to work on your camera basics. There are hundreds of tutorials out there for that.

We have the first base exposure then we dropped the ambient down 2 stops. Now we want to add some flash. You now know how to connect that flash to your camera. Next you need to know how to set the power on your flash. To do this you will need a flash that can be set manually for it's power output and not all flashes can do this. First refer to your flash manual as they are all different. I set the power on my flash for 1/2 power.



I also took a photo of the flash position:



So there you go. It really doesn't get much easier than that to take off camera manual flash photos. I kept this very basic on purpose. Simple, start simple!

Add questions to the comments.

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Simple lighting you can easily practice

As I've been reading and learning over the last few months I personally loved online tutorials where things were shown in stages. It really helped me with those "ah ha" moments. So now is where I hopefully can help some others. Just over a few months ago I would have set this up with no idea what I was going to get and keep playing until it looked good to me. No vision, just setup lights and see what happens. When I did this a few nights ago I knew exactly what I was going to get and to be honest I was within a stop of setting up the lights.

This stuff is simple...IF you get it. For some of us it takes some time to get it. Some of the references that really helped me were ones that simplified it. I think I got caught up in the complexities of the equipment. I think a lot of us do. Once I stopped thinking about equipment and stared thinking about light things changed and boy did they change quickly. One of the things that really helped was thinking about the flashes/strobes as flashlights. In your head turn off all the lights and imagine that a flashlight is clamped to that light stand. Where will that light go? What will it illuminate? What would happen if you turned it around and bounced it into an umbrella? If you want...do it! At night, turn off all the lights in your house, grab a flashlight and some of your modifiers. Remember the intensity will be low...but it will be close enough. The brighter the flashlight the better. The second simple thing is to put yourself in the position of the light. Stick your head on top of that light stand where your strobe is LOOK where it is going to fall. If you can see it the light will hit it. If you can't...it won't. Prove this to yourself. Grab a multi-sided object. A box is fine but I think this works better with things with flat sides. Put it on a table. Setup a light stand or something similar with that flashlight on it. Now look down the flashlight. Look at every side of that box what can you see? What can't you see? Now turn the lights off and the flashlight on. Look at the box. Notice the light is only on the parts that you can see. I learned this trick from David Hobby's lighting 101. It's soooo simple, why didn't I think of that?

So I wanted to setup something simple that went beyond the single strobe in an umbrella. That's pretty straight forward and if you have used one you probably know what it will do. So let's improvise a bit. Every situation is different...which is why knowing what the light will do is so important. I was sitting there talking to Amy working on the computer when this setup hit me as a great simple example. Almost too simple. I mean heck the wall was even a warm color. I setup an umbrella to camera right, her direct left. I feathered the umbrella to point more behind her than in front of her. So umbrella directly Amy left (hehehe) and pointed behind her. Not to worry you can see this in the setup photo. This gives you this effect.



It is nice lighting by itself. You can easily see where the light is coming from and look along her wrist. Notice the light fall off? As it wraps around her wrist from the lit part to the dark part? Remember...what does the light see?

So now lets add a bit of fill. We can do this about a million ways...literally. But this time it's very easy. There is a yellow wall no more than 2 feet to her right. So SB28 on a small light stand sitting on the desk. I pointed it towards the wall and angled the head up a bit to hit the yellow part of the wall. You'll see this in the setup shot in a moment. What does this do? It makes the wall into a light source. So here is JUST that strobe.



Nice warm yellowish light. Pretty much looks like there was a desk lamp. Look at her wrist again. Light fall off? Starting to see it? The 2 lights combined are in the top photo. Finally here is a wide angle view of the setup.


Click the photo above for a better view

Look at the light on the wall. See how large of a "spot" it makes? That is the relative size of the fill light. Zoom the strobe head in and out or move the strobe closer or further from the wall and that relative size changes. You can do that with your flashlight. Closer to the wall, brighter smaller light source.

This hit me as a great example because after reading Joe McNally's book "The Moment it Clicks" there is a photo in there of of Leonard Bernstein. That was an "ah ha" moment for me. Looked at the photo...thought it was just an available light photo. Wonderful photo...I mean amazing, perfect. So I read the text....are you kidding he added 3 strobes? I mean this photo looks so natural. AH HA, that's the point! You can't tell and it looks amazing. The point of this blog. How easy was it to make that fill light look natural? Go back to the top photo, does it look out of place? Does it look unnatural? It is late at night, but it sure looks like maybe there was a window to her left and a desk lamp on the desk to her right to the average viewer. Make that light look natural....easily. If that wall wasn't there I could have easily put a CTO gel on the flash to accomplish the same thing as the yellow wall. Oh BTW get McNally's book. Great read.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

Forgot to add all of these photos have 0 (zero) post processing or after the photo correction done to them. I used the out of camera JPGs exactly as they came out. Whitebalance was on 5500k.

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WDYD?

What do you do while you are waiting for your girlfriend/wife/significant other to get ready? As a male I generally take about 10 minutes to get ready to leave the house. I'm pretty sure that includes the shower. I mean what more is there to do? Shower, dress, keys, door. Anyways Amy and I were heading out to dinner one night and she was busy upstairs getting ready. I usually have a list of things I want to get done but I was showered and clean so starting a project was a bad idea. Walked by the window and hmmmm nice sunset. Photo time! Grabbed the camera bag a few tripods and speedlights and head out to the driveway.

Did a quick little cross lighting exercise and threw in some red gel for that wonderful 80s effect. This was a quick and dirty setup and really something I was just messing around with. So I tell Amy I want to take a photo before we go...I could see those wheels turning in her head...oh boy...here he goes again with that camera...how long is this going to take. She said none of that...I'm just assuming. Got the whole shebang setup with 3 speedlights and used the timer to get it all just about right. Knew I would be playing the sun-goes-down-quickly-with-the-ambient-light game but that was easy. Camera was already on the tripod and with a flick of a wheel (shutter speed) I could take the ambient anywhere I wanted. She came out and I snapped the first photo. We were slightly late at this point so I knew she wanted to get going. Let her chimp on the LCD and woooohhhh hey can we do another? :-) Couple quick timer shots throw the gear in the garage and dinner time.

Dinner was...um awesome BTW. Little restaurant called Mi Scuzi. Best Italian in Erie IMHO.

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Amy on the beach

Click image for non-blogger cropped photo

Had been dying for the weather to get a bit warmer so we could head out to the beach for some photos. Let's just say it got "warm enough." As you can see from the photo it was still a bit chilly which is why Amy's hands are covered up. This was just a simple 2 light setup with the sun/sunset in the background to show how easy it is to compliment the sun with a few small strobes (SB28s). Had one camera left and one camera right gelled with full CTO.

It was so nice to be back on the beach again. The winters are so long here that it really makes you appreciate any nice weather being it spring, summer or fall!


EDIT:
I made a quick diagram to show how this shot was lit out on the beach. Really this is one of those balancing the flash with ambient light exposures. I've had a few requests to do a tutorial on that and it is coming. But I want to do it with a lot more detail and example photos along the way.


Click on image for a larger version

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Pizza!

LOVE Pizza! I mean I L.O.V.E. pizza. So when work said we needed some pictures of the new pizza we would be selling, I'm on it! Seriously though. We needed some photos of this new pizza we are selling and quick. This didn't need to be moody, side lit, rim lighted pizza. Just something to show what it really looks like. Don't you hate it when someone uses a stock photo to sell their food?


Light boxes are light boxes. Nothing fancy to em. Sure you can go online and spend some $$ on one, or you can make one on your own like I did. Large box from receiving department, check. Box cutter to cut open box and some tape, check. Some for of diffusion for the flashes...um...hmmm...let's see...oh yea how about those toilet seat covers to well you know keep your butt clean, check. Used the back of a couple of posters we had for the backgrop and top fill. Add a couple SB28s on stands and that shoot was done in 15min. That included making the light box. Photographed a few angles and off the photos went.

Plus...the Pizza was good too!

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And we're off

Glad to finally get this setup are start posting. So little technology....so much time. Wait, stop, reverse that.

Still can not get photography out of my head. I have been thinking a lot about it lately. Photography has been with me since I was pretty young. In a very interesting way my career took me down the information highway and photography always played a hobby role in my life at best. However lately I just can not stop thinking about it. I've been reading like crazy...learning...and have had many of those "ah ha" moments within the past few months. It was as if all of a sudden things just started clicking inside. Then you realize how many awesome/amazing/talented/creative/oh you get the idea photographers that are out there. It's mind boggling...and I just can't get enough. Find a link to yet another amazing photographer and I can't get off the site.

Was watching the Zach Arias Photography Critiques and started thinking oh crap what IS my focus? Had to settle down a little and realize that I don't have one. THANK GOODNESS! I don't have to. This is not my job and I'm not looking to/wanting to make money. This is my hobby. Something I love and enjoy. I take pictures for uh lets see, ME. Ok so then I settle down. Next question is what to do with all this energy I have towards this hobby. Hmmmmm, so I was reading David Hobby's blog and it really got me to thinking. I love this and I have a real time job so I'm not looking to get paid but I don't really have a passion for something that I want to photograph. Meaning I'm not Ansel Adams with a passion for the mountains and B&W. I'm happy just having something to shoot!

So the first thing I did was make it known at work that photography was a bit of a hobby of mine and that if they ever needed something done I'd be glad to "give it a try." That being key. No expectations here, just let me try. Sure enough a few weeks later I'm talking with Marketing and setting up a shoot. Lots of pressure and zero time to prepare, just the way I like it! Wait, I loved it! For me it was much easier hearing what someone else wanted and making it come to life. My photography now had a purpose. Wow, I like this! More thinking and I now I think I've realized that I want to at least start offering my photography for free. Especially for those that need it but can't afford it. Once again reference one of David Hobby's blogs. Yea that's where I need to be. At least for now. Photos with a purpose and something to keep my mind occupied.

Oh and that little guy above in the photo, that's my youngest son James. We had a moment this morning. Love it! Love him!


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