flash photography techniques

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flash photography techniques

01 natural looking flash

flash photography techniques intro page ~ natural looking flash ~ flash & ambient light

Making flash not look like flash:

I use flash very often in my professional work and personal work. But I try and make the use

of flash not appear intrusive in the photograph. I nearly always have an on-camera flash, but

I try to diffuse it or bounce it wherever possible. I use as little direct flash as I can, except

outdoors where I try and use available light, and use flash only to lift the shadows and reduce

the contrast. However, sometimes it is just best to overpower the ambient light with flash

but still try to make it look natural, ie, not like flash.

Lets start off with these few photos. They were all done using flash on camera.

Youll note that there is no discernable flash shadow. I absolutely loathe a distinct flashshadow. So thats the ideal that I always strive for that it shouldnt be obvious that I didnt

just use existing light. It isnt always possible, but that is what I try for in every photograph.

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This was shot at f2, with flash bounced

directly behind me into the open roomto just help lift the shadows. Note,

there is NO flash shadow.I purposelydidnt use a diffuser dome / Stofen

omnibounce here, since it wouldve

thrown too much flash directlyforward. I needed all the flash to be

indirect.

specific settings:

Nikon D2H

Nikon 85mm f1.4

1/125th @ f2 @ 400 iso

manual; matrix metering

TTL flash: -1.7 exp comp

My choice of settings here were

dictated by the available light, and I

just used a hint of flash by bouncing it

into the huge room behind me. At f2,

and as fill, I didnt need to blast a ton

of light from my strobe.

.

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Flash bounced over my left shoulder.

Note that there is NO direct flash, andhence no flash shadow.specific

settings:Nikon D2H

Nikon 28-70mm f2.8

1/250th @ f4 @ 400 isomanual; matrix metering

TTL flash: +1 exp comp

The high shutter speed was a specific

choice so that the stained-glass

window wouldnt be blown out, but

instead retain the colours. The bride

was entirely lit by bounced flash, so by

controlling my shutter speed (for my

chosen aperture and iso), I could

match the exposure for the window.

I bounced flash off that sand-coloured

brickwork, and this did affect my

colour balance but since I shoot in

raw, correcting the WB was no effort.

With those two photos different flash exposure compensation was set.

In the first image, the flash was used as subtle fill-flash, and therefore the flash compensationwas dialed down.

In the 2nd image, the brides face is lit entirely by flash. Hence my flash is my main source oflight. So I would have to start somewhere around 0 EV compensation. But from experience I

knew that the lighter toned face, and white dress and the backlighting would influence myflash exposure. So I dialled in more flash exposure.

In this next image, I bounced my on-camera strobe off the wall directly behind me.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give regarding using bounce flash, is not to get stuck on

the idea that you need a ceiling above you to bounce flash. Look around for other surfaces

that can be used.

By making my light source larger than just the area of the small flash tube, I am immediately

making my light softer. And this is exactly the reason why we bounce flash.

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Before setting this up, I made a few

test shots to see that the city lights arecorrectly exposed. Then I positioned

the couple.Because I wanted to movearound, I decided to use TTL and not

manual flash but this meant I had to

bracket my exposures and ride myflash compensation.

specific settings:

Canon 24mm f1.4

1/20th @ f4 @ 640 iso

manual; eval metering

TTL flash: -1.7 exp comp

The slow shutter speed is to allow the

city lights to record.

Because the flash and the city lights

are vastly different in colour

temperature, I fixed it in post-

production. With raw, it was little

effort to create two images with

different WB settings, and then

combining them with layers in

Photoshop.

Tangents

02 flash + ambient light

flash photography techniques

natural looking flash ~ flash & ambient light ~ dragging the shutter

Here I want to illustrate a particular point for those who disdain flash and prefer ambient light

only even if flash wouldve helped.

With a bit of thought, and understanding of some essential techniques, using flash need not

look unnatural, nor spoil the ambient light.

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By metering for the ambient light .. ie. making sure my ambient exposure is correct, I coulduse flash to lift the shadow areas and make it a better image than it wouldve been without

flash.

Have a look at the following photo :

I bounced flash off the church wall.The church was large, and the ceiling

high .. but by shooting in a vertical

position, I could bounce my flash

straight towards the church interiorwall to my left.

This spilled enough light onto the

couple to improve the image, andmake my post-production time much

less.

(Starting with an image that is veryclose to the ideal exposure and WB

will really speed up your workflow)

The settings were:

Canon 1Dmk2NCanon 70-200mm f2.8 IS

1/125th @ f2.8 @ 1000 isomanual; eval metering

TTL flash: 0 exp comp

I purposely did NOT use anomnibounce / Stofen attachment, since

I didnt want flash to spill forward for

the series of images I took here. I did

NOT set my flash to 45` since this

would not have been a correct angle to

bounce at.

As the parents walked down the aisle, I had time to make a comparison shot without flash.(I did this specifically for presentation here).

So here are two shots in succession. The one with flash, and the one purely ambient light. The

shot with flash had the WB slightly adjusted, the other is directly out of camera. Exposuresettings remained the same, and I didnt touch up exposure in raw either.

Note that the flash shot has NO flash shadow. It looks natural, and a hell of a lot better than

the ambient-only shot. By using flash, *I* controlled the light, and didnt merely shrug my

shoulders and complain that the ambient light wasnt ideal.

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To improve exposure for the ambient-only shot, I couldve set a slower shutter speed, andrisked blur as they move and from camera shake. Or I couldve bumped up my iso to get the

higher shutter speed, but then have to deal with increased grain. Also, the ambient light isnteven. With flash I had much more control over how the final image looks.

And with this I am also daring the ambient-only purists to tell me that the image with flash

doesnt look a lot better than the ambient shot.

Tangents

03 dragging the shutter

flash photography techniques flash & ambient light ~ dragging the shutter ~bouncing flash

balancing flash and ambient light dragging the shutter

When balancing flash with the available light, the combination of settings is usually chosen

so that the mood of the place and surrounds is retained or at least have the available

light add to the image. In doing so, the advice is often given to drag the shutter. Inallowing a slower shutter speed, more of the ambient light is allowed to register and influence

the final image.

dragging the shutter

This is a very simple technique but an understanding of how and when to apply it, often

seems elusive.

So lets take a step back and considerambient exposure.

Here we have three controls for our exposure shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

With flash, we have two completely different beasts to consider manual flash, and TTL

flash. We will have to consider manual flash and TTL flash separately, since their behaviour

and how you control the exposure for each, are fundamentally different.

balancing manual flash with ambient light:

Looking first at manual flash we have 4 controls:

- aperture, ISO, distance, power.

this distance would be the distance from your light source to the subject, and it should

intuitively make sense already. The closer you move your manual flash (perhaps in a

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softbox) to your subject, the brighter the light would be, and hence it would affect yourexposure.

Similarly, it should already make sense that if we increase or decrease the power setting onour manual flash, this too would affect exposure.

Now, comparing the controls between what affects ambient exposure, and what affects

manual flash exposure, we can see that there are two common controls aperture and ISO.This means that shutter speed becomes the independent control for available light

exposure. So when we balance manual flash and ambient light, it makes most sense to start

by adjusting the shutter speed, since adjusting the aperture or ISO in an attempt to change the