"Lighting touch"

I always try to keep myself engaged in photography, no matter how hectic my other chores are.

Every week, I regularly challenge myself to think of any new things or ideas on how to take pictures.

This week I tried to do some lighting stuff again, but this time I tried something different, something I have been thinking for quite sometime now.

Shot using my Fujifilm X100 and external flashes.

Bored, so I asked my wife to pose with me in the hallway.

Played with my lighting style this time.

Great way to at least cure my photography craving this week.


Cheers.

Alex

Purist vs Strobist

A lot of photographers I know likes to shoot available light.

I prefer flash.

So, which one is better?  Ethical?

For me, both  are.

Shooting with available light, to some is the  only way to go.

Not for me, I am shooting both. It really depends on how I like my photos to look.

I will try to differentiate the two by posting sample photos.

Purist style

The photo above is shot using the ambient light only. Purist style, no fill flash.

The sky is  a little gloomy, light is nice and diffused, there is no need for me to use flash.

This gives a more airy look with nice natural colors.

Strobist style

The above photo is taken seconds after the first photo.

I dialed the exposure down a bit, then lighted Lyn with a single flash at camera left.

This gives a more subdued look and gives more focus on the subject.

Also, notice that the colors of the background are different now?

It is really up to you

For me, using both ways are okay. One light is natural, the other is man-made. 

Both looks good too.

It really depends on you and the feeling that you want to convey on your photographs. 

To stick to only one way is limiting yourself.

To be a 100% purist is losing the opportunity to be more creative.

To be a 100% strobist is failing to take advantage of a beautiful natural light. 

To be using both is great. You will have as many possibilities of conveying your messages through your photographs. 

Learn how to use both. 

Cheers!

Alex

Take that flash off your camera!

Bouncing our flash is a good way to soften our lights, but if we keep on using it all the time, all of our image will look the same.

Soft, pleasant and even light.Yeah it looks good...but..uhm..boring! Kinda like "meh".

I always mention that I prefer to take my lights off my camera.

Why is that?

Because with off camera flash we can create dimensions in our image.

We can change our light's direction.

We can play with shadows and highlights.

Blah blah blah...

Here's how

There are a lot of ways to take our flashes off our cameras. 

1. Synch cords

A cord used to attached your flash to your camera's hot shoe. 

2. Radio triggers

One piece you attached to your camera's hot shoe and the other piece to your flash.

3. Using optical slaves

Using our pop-up flash to trigger our off camera flashes. 

The two flashes above was triggered by my pop-up flash. 

Remember, always buy flashes with optical slaves. It's great and convenient. 

And don't forget to use  light stands for your flashes.

They are cheap and very light to carry. They are very useful to hold our lights.

Or you can also use an assistant to hold your lights for you.

But light stands are more reliable, non-complaining and cheaper. (In my opinion)

So why again should we bother taking our flashes off our camera? 

Answer: For us to be able to change our light's direction.

In the photo above, I placed my light on camera right using a light stand. 

By changing the direction of our light sources, we created shadows. That gave our photo dimensions.

It doesn't look flat, more like 3D.

This is the bread and butter stuff of flash photography.

In this photo I placed my  light on camera left. The shadows will tell you.

Again, it adds dimension in our photos. It create shadows and highlights. It looks 3D compared to a flat direct on camera flash.

It is a good habit, it trains us to be more creative.

It makes us think more about our lights.

And by changing the direction of our lights, we change the directions of our shadows. We add emotions, tensions and drama to our photos.

We are like painters with our brushes when using our lights off camera.

Take that flash off your camera!

Cheers.

Alex

Bouncing your flash

Bouncing flash off walls and ceilings is a very helpful trick to use indoors and in some instances outdoors. We all know that direct flash is harsh and hard. Bouncing it will make our light softer and evenly spread.

This is a neat trick to learn.  As long as you have a white-colored surface to bounce your light with, you'll be alright.

Bouncing off ceilings

This is the most commonly used bouncing technique. You can use this indoors anytime, as long as the ceiling is white and not too high for your flash to reach.

Using this technique, you can always get a nice and soft light that is evenly spread..

This photo of baby Chelsea was taken with the flash bounced at the ceiling.

Always remember that the ceiling should be white, the color of your bounce surface will influence your light.

The height of your ceiling will also affect your light intensity. The higher the ceiling, the weaker your light will be.

You can manually adjust the flash power to determine the right amount of light hitting your subject. This is one reason why I love to adjust my flashes manually.

Bouncing off walls

Same technique but instead of bouncing up at the ceiling, we will bounce our flash at our walls. The source of  our light will come from the sides this time.

Nice to use indoors and outdoors. Any wall or white surface will do. 

Again, always remember that the color of the bounce surface will influence the color of your light. 

The distance of the wall to your subject will determine the intensity of the light. 

You can adjust light intensity manually on the flash, or you can change the subject's distance from the wall. 

Shot below is a photo of Lyn taken with the flash bounced at the wall on her right. 

Conclusion

Bouncing your flash is a nice little trick to keep under your sleeves. 

The images you'll produce using this technique will be more pleasing to the eyes than a direct nuke-em-till-they-glow flash. 

In fact, you can use this technique using different kinds of surfaces. It could be a white shirt, a white board or a white car. You get my drift?

You can use colored surfaces too if you want, depending on the look you're after.

I love to bounce my light during events and parties indoors.

Try using this and you'll create good lighting.

This is one advantage of using external flashes. You can change the direction of your flash.

Next time, we will talk about getting your flash off your camera.

Cheers!

Alex

Introduction to external flashes

This is where the fun starts.If you really want to be more creative in your photography, this topic is for you.

Using external flashes can open up a lot of lighting possibilities and creativity. This will help transform your photos from mere snapshots to pieces of arts.

Cant we just shoot available light? 

Of course we can! I have been doing that for the last couple of years.

But with available light, we only have one light to base our exposure from. There is only one correct exposure, or else you'll either have an underexpose or an overexpose image.

But if we carry additional light with us as an option, it will give us endless possibilities. Photography is defined as painting with light. Let's consider our flashes as our brushes then.

Two kinds of external flashes

There are two basic types of external flashes, the TTL and the manual flashes.

The difference is that in TTL you let the camera adjust the light power output of the flash while in manual flashes you do it yourself manually.

I prefer using manual flashes. For me, it is like cooking. You put a little of this and that till you are satisfied with its taste.

Uses of external flashes

I will run you through to some of the uses of external flashes. We will talk about this techniques in the coming articles. 

You can bounce your light on ceiling or walls to get a nice and evenly spread soft light. 

Like this shot of little Chelsea and her dad. Light bounced at the ceiling, it gives an even and pleasant light. 

You can take your light off your camera and put it in a 45% angle to your subject.

My wife lighted with an off camera flash, 45% at camera right. 

You can use it as a very effective fill light to avoid shadows outdoors. 

Without fill, this photo will have shadows on their faces and some other areas not reached by the sun's light
. 

You can even include it  in your frame.

Well...

You can take a simple and quick one light set up portrait like below.

This photo of coach Ariel was lighted by a single flash handheld by yours truly at camera left. 

Or you can be a little bit more creative like this.

Two light set up. Flash with umbrella lighting Lyn, bare flash at the back lighting the flowers.

And this

White balance tweaking made the sky bluer. Itthipol was lighted by a single flash at camera right, gelled to balance the color temperature. 

I can go on and on, the possibilities are endless.

I encourage everyone that wants to try new things and be more creative in their photography to include off camera flashes in their arsenal.

 They are fun, exciting and challenging.

Let's dwell with some techniques in lighting in the coming articles.

Cheers

Alex

Using the pop-up flash outdoors

Last time, we talked about taming our harsh pop-up flash using different methods.

If you haven't read it yet, please click here before proceeding.

When shooting outdoors,we sometimes have a bright sky at the background that causes our subjects to be dark underexposed.

This is because the camera is metering the entire scene, it avoids over exposing the sky, but it makes our subjects dark.

Of course, we could spot meter our subject.But that would make the sky so unpleasantly bright.

Common sense tells us to use our flash. (Duh?) 

Here`s a sample shot with a direct flash.

Now, we have a well exposed subject and background that is pleasant to the eyes.

But see the harsh light and the unpleasant shadows?

We can then apply what we have learned in taming the harsh flash.

There you go, the shadows are gone. We also properly exposed our subject and the background. 

No super bright skies, not a dark subject.

Another example.

Our pop-up flash can be a very handy tool in situations like these.

It can help eliminate shadows in our subject's face when under the bright sun or shooting with the sun at the background.

Of course, there are other ways to do this.

i.e using reflectors or make our subject face the light source.

All shots are taken using my Fujifilm HS20EXR in manual mode. Shot in a hurry, so forgive the quality and composition.

Cheers.

Alex

The quirky little pop-up flash

Pop-up flashes are crappy! I am not using my camera's built in pop-up flash ever again. It simply just sucks!

(Are you serious?)

Not really. I actually believe that there are many uses for the pop-up flash. We will talk about those uses later.

But let's forget about that for a while.

First, let me tell you that these little harsh flashes are causing a lot of unpleasant photos.

To clearly illustrate my point, I grabbed a random guy outside, shoved him in our chair and took photos of him with my pop-up flash activated.

This is just so  unattractive!

No, I'm not talking about the guy. I am referring to the quality of the light.

Look at his face, it's all washed out. Unpleasant to the eyes! (Again, I'm talking about the light here)

The light is harsh and the photo looks flat. And don't get me started about how ugly those shadows are. (Hint: At the wall, just below his ears) It looks creepy. And the red eyes...ugh.


If you think that photo above looks okay, then you can go on with your lives and keep using that little pop-up flash of yours.

                                        Nuke 'em till they glow brotha!

                                   

But if you agree with me that pop-up flashes sucks produces unpleasant photos, let's then agree to not ever again use our pop-up flashes.

Let's create an anti pop-up flashers club, then make it our sole purpose to discourage others against using their pop-up flashes.

Nah...That's too much work.

Keep reading. We will try to discuss and solve the problems that pop-up flashes produce.

The problem is...

Pop-up flash is a very small light source and it produces harsh direct light.

So how do we improve the quality of the light from our pop-up flashes?

Let's try to fix it...

Since our random guy don't want to pose for me anymore (he did put up a good fight the last time I tried),this time I decided to shoot inanimate objects.

They seem not to care being shoved around and didn't even hit me back when I tried nuking them with flashes.

Let's start by digging up why we need to use flash in the first place. 

Do you know why? Here's a clue...

 Genius!

Simply because it's dark. (Don't be too happy, my 5 year old nephew could have guessed it too.)

For the sake of argument, I took this shot and purposely underexpose our subjects to demonstrate the need for flash.

Let the camera think for itself...

We can use our camera's TTL flash setting. TTL means through the lens, and it lets your camera determine the right flash power output to use in different shooting conditions.

For instructions how to use your camera's flash TTL settings, refer to your owner's manual. Don't be lazy.

Let's try to use my Nikon's TTL flash.

Now, the photo is bright. But we can see the unpleasant shadows and washed out parts of the photo.

This is what we want to avoid.

Let's try setting the flash manually...

Most cameras also offers you the capacity to adjust flash power output to your own liking. To be able to do that, you need to check your owner's manual again.

I found out, through trial and error, that setting at the least power (1/32) give us the most pleasant output. But it really depends on the distance of your subject and how bright your environment is.

Quite good. But I'm not happy yet. Look at the shadows. I still don't like it.

Let's try to make the light source bigger and spread the light...

Great. Now we're making sense! 

Our problem is that the pop-up flash produces small and harsh light source, so we should make it spread evenly and make it softer.

There are two ways to do this.  The cheap way and the cheaper than cheap way. 

Let's start with the cheap way. 

In camera shops one can usually find a pop-up diffuser like the photos below for about $10.

It helps diffuse the harsh light, spread it a little bit more and makes the light source a little bit bigger. Above pictured attached on my D3100.

                                                  Photo result

Now, it looks good isn't it? We have tamed the harsh light and made the shadows a little bit pleasant. 

If you always depends on your pop-up flash, I highly recommend you buy this one. 

Your $10 is worth it. 

Want a more cheaper alternative?

Use this precious material.

Yes, a paper.

Cut a piece of paper and cover your pop up flash like what I did above. It's almost free and you can always find one anywhere. 

You can also use a white cloth, tissue paper(unused ones please) or whatever white material you want to use. 

                                                         Result

There you go, white paper as a cheaper diffuser. Photo looks okay now, although it is still not perfect. 

Conclusion...

I don't hate using pop-up flash.

But honestly, I rarely do use it.

And if I do, I make sure I use my diffuser or head out to steal some paper or tissue to use. Make sense to carry one in your camera bag all the time.

That's all for now. Next time, we will talk about using your pop-up flash outdoor.

Any other alternatives you are using to make your pop-up flash photos looks good, please share it with us in the comment section below. 

Cheers!

Alex