DSLR Photography Forum

Here's a little secret: There are only a few things you can do to control light. Once you learn those - and learn them well - you are off to the races.
- David Hobby, Strobist

It's easy to find well-known names in classic rangefinder photography who have eloquently spoken against using anything but available light. I can only conclude that they never read the excellent Strobist blog. David Hobby's website is possibly the most important photographic site on the internet.

A strobe can be the dominant, or only, source of light in an image, or it can add subtle accents. But the use of a direct flash firing from the camera often has ugly and harsh results. For this assignment, look for creative ways to use your flash. Don't just point it straight ahead and use the 'auto' settings. Even if all you have is a pop-up flash built into your camera, you still have options to modify the light.

And please describe the techniques you used to get the results you did.

This is experimenting with some flash techniques that we recently had in my photography class. I took many different ones, all with me in different sizes and positions in the frame, but this one came out the 'moodiest'.

great mood. I really like it. Any tips on things you've learned about this, esp getting exposures right?

D.J.

Something strange happens when you leave a grown man, a camera, and a vase of flowers alone in a room. Especially when the flowers are pretty...

When I'm working with a studio/strobe setup, I like to start simply and add more stuff as I need it. Here's the initial setup I used for photographing these small sunflowers:

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The background is a sheet of gold bristol board that I bought to use as reflector cards but hadn't cut down yet. The table's new (Ikea) and replaces the ironing board, but otherwise everything else is carried over from the setup that I used for the "food" shots in assignment #61. Notice where the light it hitting the side of the flowers.

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The photo above was shot with the camera tucked into the "L" of the reflector. Two things in particular are interesting about this one: at iso400, 1/125 and f/11, the background is completely black. The white card that I'm using as a snoot is keeping the strobe from hitting it, and there's not enough ambient light in the room to lighten it. The other thing is that there's far too much light on the leaves below the flower. In nature light never comes from below.

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The only change to the photo above is that I've tipped the flash slightly upwards, directing the light away from the bottom leaves. (I've developed all of the "good" shots in Lightroom with the default values, no exposure corrections, Clarity and Vibrance both set at +30, and using my colour-corrected camera profile.) Just for fun, here's a flash-eye-view of the setup showing the difference in light control:

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Moving on, I switched to an overhead flash setup.

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I've kept a small card on the flash to stop light from spilling onto the background. The strobe is clipped to a small tripod, and the yellow beanbag is an impromptu counter-ballance that keeps it from falling over. The black folder next to my camera is a spring-clip design that holds all of my reflector cards -- one of my rare instances of forethought and organization. Beside the Big Bucket O Clamps is my 7-14 ultrawide lens, which is just keeping me company for now. The finished photo is below:

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One of the big advantages of taking the strobe-lit setup photos is that it quickly tells me what does and doesn't work. For example, the reflector underneath the vase in the photo above is doing nothing. I flipped my plywood to the non-black side, and added an umbrella, for the following setup and finished photo:

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You can finally see some of the background, but the shot's lacking interest otherwise. The answer to that is to add a second strobe.

continued: two strobes, no waiting...


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The two-strobe setup is very similar to the last single-strobe arrangement. I've pivoted the umbrella to provide less light from the front, and added the second light on another small tripod. It's being fired by an optical trigger, since I didn't want to take my spare PW off of the camera that I'm using to take the setup shots. While the room looks darker in this photo, the ambient light hasn't changed. I've had to dial down the ISO to keep the additional strobe light under control. The finished photos using this setup are below.

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3


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Finally, I moved the second strobe to light the background, and flipped the table-top back to the back side to cut down on light bouncing back up. I've also tipped the umbrella forward again to bring a little more light to the front of the flowers.

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By now I'm looking for something a little different. I combined my ultra-wide 7-14 with my teleconverter to get a 38mm-equivalent focal length. (The 11-22 which would have done this without the TC was being used to take the setup photos.) It's a different look:

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And just before dinner interrupted my play, I put the 50mm Macro lens that I used for all of the other photos onto the teleconverter, and dropped the aperture to f/5.6 for more selective focus:

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... in total, I took 172 photos, of which 19 show some promise, and I'll probably only ever use a couple of them. Hopefully it can provide some inspiration, and thanks for humouring me.

Luke!
I like a lot what you did with the reflection in the window... Wouldn't you mind to say how you did it?
Most of the times my reflections with flash doesn't work at all...

Matt,
Sometimes I think these assignments are a bit spooky!!
I was also taking pictures in my studio to some sunflowers before I read the assingment with flash...

Of course I won't post any picture of my sunflowers, yours are so beautiful...

As always thanks a lot for this assignment, I am sure I will learn a lot from this one...

First thing I have problems with the term...

Does strobist mean that you don't have any flash in your camera and your flashes (one or two) should be out of your camera?

Strobes also include studio flash?

In this assignment one could include pictures with flash you take out doors (fill flash)? G took some nice ones of cows today but we thought that they might not fit as the flash is in the camera...

I am very sorry if I ask silly questions but this is something I don't understand well and I want to learn.

I'll buy some things you use in these pictures and I'll try... I would love to have some pictures like yours... I like them a lot!!
Do you think my golden reflector would work the same as your golden board??

My umbrella is white both sides made of thin fabrick not like yours? could I get the same effect?

I am after your picture #8 and your picture #6 second post..

I have a light tend but it gives very soft pictures, beautiful but sometimes my pictures look a bit flat, not sharp...

anyway... here is what I got yesterday

I wanted to have the whole flower in the foreground sharp. I work with a small flower to get it all sharp, but maybe other lens will work better? I worked all my pictures with my macro..




This one was with the studio flash and my flash.




This one was with the studio flash bounce to the wall in front of the flower. as the wall is white it gives beautiful whites to the flowers... I tested that with another white flower.




What makes me more angry about this kind of photography is that I don't know how to get the effect I want and I am wandering all the room moving my flashes testing again and at the end I don't get what I really wanted... Yesterday, I found the way I was working so ridiculous... and then I see the assignment "flash"!
That was really funny...

Thanks also for showing your setup, always very useful.

Irma Wrote:Luke!
I like a lot what you did with the reflection in the window... Wouldn't you mind to say how you did it?
Most of the times my reflections with flash doesn't work at all...

Hi Irma,


there is no reflection there.. it's using front snc flash. So the flash goes off with me in the frame, and then I move while the sutter stays open.. I think for one of my other photos in another thread you thought it was reflecton too... with the road signs and then the bus overlayed? Same thing.. no reflection just flash and open shutter to get both the road, and the bus whizzing past.

Nice black and white flower shots btw.

DJ1234 Wrote:great mood. I really like it. Any tips on things you've learned about this, esp getting exposures right?

D.J.

not really DJ, that one was a result of trying about 6 different shots with various settings.

Irma Wrote:Of course I won't post any picture of my sunflowers, yours are so beautiful...

Thanks very much, but everyone has their own style and way of photographing the same subject. Feel free to share yours, I'd like to see them.

Irma Wrote:First thing I have problems with the term...

Does strobist mean that you don't have any flash in your camera and your flashes (one or two) should be out of your camera? ... In this assignment one could include pictures with flash you take out doors (fill flash)? G took some nice ones of cows today but we thought that they might not fit as the flash is in the camera...

The assignment itself is for us to work on flash techniques, on-camera or off. Strobist is a particular website that emphases getting the flash off-camera and finding creative ways to use inexpensive equipment. It's a great resource, but following its techniques aren't required.

By calling this assignment "flash" I'm excluding "hot lights", continuous bulbs and lamps. They're great to learn with, because you can see exactly what effect they have, but they're not great to work with. They trail a cord, for one thing, and they're hard on the subject. By learning to use a flash more effectively -- on-camera, off-camera, small, large, single or multiple -- we vastly increase our options. The techniques of modifying and controlling flash is the same for all sizes.

Irma Wrote:Do you think my golden reflector would work the same as your golden board? My umbrella is white both sides made of thin fabrick not like yours? could I get the same effect?

The reflector and board would work the same way. Having a coloured reflector changes the amount and colour of the light that bounces back, as you know; I was just lucky that the gold matches the colours of the subjects well and that I had it available. Except for the very last photo, it wasn't working as a reflector.

I probably should have continued the numbering from one post to the next...

#8 was a single flash with the umbrella. It's probably two stops under-exposed, so increasing the power, decreasing my aperture, or raising the iso setting would have made it much better. The silver umbrella is giving an interesting mix of shadows and diffused light because the strobe is so far from the centre of the umbrella. That's not intentional, but it works.

#6mk2 is the same basic umbrella setup (correctly exposed this time) with the added background light. Being able to add light to the background gives a nice separation, and isn't something I've tried at home before.

The umbrella that I was using is silver on the inside with a black outer shell to stop light from passing through it. (Silver is a better reflector than white, making it a little more efficient with a small strobe.) An umbrella that's all white will allow some light to pass through, so you can either use it to bounce light (as in my setup) or to fire the strobes through. Either way will give you a softer light, because there's more ambient light in the room when you take the photo. You can add something black to the top of the umbrella, or get "convertible" umbrellas that have a removable black shell.

Depth of field in macro photography is always a challenge, and using a strobe adds a solution and a problem. To shoot at an aperture narrow enough to get good DOF requires a great deal of power. If you have enough power it solves the DOF problem, but then you'll have more problems balancing ambient light and wear your batteries out faster.

There's also a difference in our cameras. I'm using a small-sensor SLR at a 50mm focal length. This gives me the angle of view of a 100mm telephoto lens on your 5D, but I keep the depth of field of a 50mm normal lens. So most of my photos are shot at f/11, which gives the same DOF as f/16 on an APS-C camera, or f/22 on a full-frame body, with an equivalent angle of view.

I like all three of your photos, but prefer the more directional light of the second and third ones. #3 is especially nice. The straight-ahead composition works really well with the minimal background, and the soft shadows give an effective sense of depth without blocking any detail.

Irma Wrote:What makes me more angry about this kind of photography is that I don't know how to get the effect I want and I am wandering all the room moving my flashes testing again and at the end I don't get what I really wanted... Yesterday, I found the way I was working so ridiculous... and then I see the assignment "flash"! That was really funny...

I can relate to the frustration, believe me. Taking my setup photos with the flashes firing really helped me to see what was happening, so that made the shoot much simpler.

Here are some of the basic rules that I've figured out, from reading the Strobist website, the various classes I've taken, and my own trial and error:


The closer the flash is, the brighter it will be.

The larger the light source is, the softer it will be.

The closer the flash is, the larger it looks to your subject.

Finally:

Flash is instantaneous. Shutter speed only changes the amount of ambient light. Shooting at 1/125 lets in half as much ambient light as 1/60, but it does not change the power of the flash. Aperture and ISO affect both flash and ambient light. Changing the aperture from f/8 to f/11 will cut your total light in half.

BELLERBY Wrote:there is no reflection there.. it's using front snc flash. So the flash goes off with me in the frame, and then I move while the sutter stays open.. I think for one of my other photos in another thread you thought it was reflecton too... with the road signs and then the bus overlayed? Same thing.. no reflection just flash and open shutter to get both the road, and the bus whizzing past.

Thanks for the explanation -- it makes a lot more sense now. And it's hard to get right, so don't worry about how many times it takes to get it right. It's a great shot.

Luke - I like your shot. I wish I had time to muck around with all this type of stuff.

Matt - I can appreciate the effort you went to put all that information up for us - great job.

Here is one I set up at a wedding a few weeks ago. There is a flash off camera behind the couple set up with a radio trigger and a snoot. I also have a flash onboard and another off camera to my left and behind pointed to the ceiling. Exposure and all flashes were set manually.

I had to shoot when the couple were between me and the snooted flash to get the effect I wanted. This is the first wedding I tried it on . I had a better result on Saturday - but have no pics yet to post.

Cheers,

Chris

I say the same as Chris, thanks so much for all this information, Matt...
Very usefull, indeed...

I am going out today to buy my sunflowers. The rest of the week will be rainny so it is perfect time to practice with this assignment...

Chris,
This is a beautiful picture. I love this effect in this kind of pictures. The halo looks great!!
Look forward to seeing more of your work in this assignment, Chris. I am sure you have also very good tips to share...

Could it be that these pictures with flash have become a bit of fashion at the moment? I don't remember to have seen so many pictures taken with flash few years ago... or maybe I never paid attention to them...

Wedding Shooter Wrote:Luke - I like your shot. I wish I had time to muck around with all this type of stuff.[/url]

well, neither would I, but as it was part of a course, we had to get out there and practise. I'd like to try it again sometime as it seems like you can get some interesting effects from it.

Well then, I will add my humble pictures too... This takes some will power after seeing the artwork that has been posted here. Wonderful pictures all of them! Especially Matthew's flower shots - I admire the technique as well as the patience. I'm no good at flowers and probably not too interested either; if you left me alone in a room with flowers, I'd try to prepare a mixed salad most likely if I could find oil, onions and vinegar.

What I'm trying to do is fill flash. First of all, I felt like a fool walking around in broad daylight or even bright sunshine with the flash gun mounted. Although I had seen pros doing it... After a while I realised the great freedom it gave me. Without flash, shooting towards the sun always resulted in blown out skies and black silhouettes if there was something in the foreground. With the flash, some of these pictures are suddenly possible. Woohoo!

What I have here wouldn't have worked without fill flash. First, I have a couple of black baby cows, backlit, together with some white sheep.



A closeup, somewhat cropped...



Irma, taking a picture...



Edit: I forgot to mention that none of these pictures has been tweaked in PS, it's just Lightroom. All adjustments applied to the whole picture, no dodging and burning.

BELLERBY Wrote:

Irma Wrote:Luke!
I like a lot what you did with the reflection in the window... Wouldn't you mind to say how you did it?
Most of the times my reflections with flash doesn't work at all...

Hi Irma,


there is no reflection there.. it's using front snc flash. So the flash goes off with me in the frame, and then I move while the sutter stays open.. I think for one of my other photos in another thread you thought it was reflecton too... with the road signs and then the bus overlayed? Same thing.. no reflection just flash and open shutter to get both the road, and the bus whizzing past.

Nice black and white flower shots btw.

Hello there , i love that shot just like Irma and i understand what you did to get it , but i am also wondering what would happen with secondary curtain flash ? Would it give you the same effect ? or would it change the mood and make you more noticable ( for a lack of a better word ) .
I think i will have to give this a try but it will have to wait for some free time .

...... Shawn

Ok here is one of my tries . I did these on a piece of plexy glass with my wifes help and a straw . i used only one of my strobes from top right . Any other info that yall might want let me know i will be glad to share ..










Here is a couple of flowers that i shot while trying to make a light box . Same lighting as the water drops but i used some diffusing material to get even light . I wish i would have taken pictures of the set up to share , sorry .









Thanks for looking and any C/C is welcome ........ Shawn

From last night: Essentially the exact same long exposures, but I added off-camera flash to the second picture for more realistic-looking water.
(Inspired by Matthew's surf photos)





I'll need to sober up and look around for more of my recent flash work that I haven't shown here before.
Mostly insects, but I'm branching out and shooting more diverse subjects these days.

Some great stuff shown in this thread already--I like that this group isn't afraid to use artificial light.

I find that the self-styled "purists" who proudly say that they "only shoot with natural light" are really just too cheap to invest in light, or too inept to make it work, or too lazy to figure out what to do.
They are missing out.

Chris, I love that shot. The use of the strobes is very effective. If you hadn't mentioned the on-camera flash or the bounced flash camera-left unless you had mentioned it. But it's the snoot that makes the shot really pop. I'm trying to imagine the shot without the rim light to give some separation between the black tux and the background, or the highlights to her hair. The extra effort and skill with the flash technique really makes the shot.

Guerito, that's a great use of flash. I hardly ever use flash in the daylight (my main camera doesn't even have a pop-up) but it really does have a great effect. Photographing backlit black fur? Impressive. The catch lights are a nice bonus, as they really bring the animals' eyes to life.

I can see that using a falsh during daylight gets you odd looks: the animals all think you've lost your mind. And it's nice to see Irma working away, too. That's a very subtle watermark you put on the tree behind her.

Shawn, I really like the second water drop and the second flower. The rose looks a little soft; the light's nice and gentle, which suits the subject, but is the focus off? And thanks for backing me up on the guys-with-flowers thing.

Keith, I love your night shots at this plaza, but I have to say that I prefer the non-flash version. :o It looks like you're balancing a number of different light sources, and you've run into the same problem that I did with colour-balancing the flash. My solution was to convert to mine to black and white, and that works really well for this image too. The different colours makes it easy to shape the tones, and the flash gives the water an authentic sparkle without being distracting. Although I have to wonder what this would look like with the flash gelled to different colours...

Irma Wrote:Could it be that these pictures with flash have become a bit of fashion at the moment? I don't remember to have seen so many pictures taken with flash few years ago... or maybe I never paid attention to them...

Irma, that's a really good question. I think a couple of things have changed in the past couple of years. For one thing, it's now easy to buy cheap and fairly reliable radio triggers to fire flashes remotely. A transmitter-receiver pair on eBay costs about as much as my TTL flash cable. The other thing that's changed is the website Strobist. I really think he's sparked a lot of interest in being able to use small and effective flashguns off-camera, taking lighting out of the "pro" studios and making it accessible to a lot more people.

It's great to see so many people taking so many great photos in so many different styles. Thanks, everyone!

I was out a couple of nights ago with my flash and cable for it. I had hoped to take some photos under a neat old railway bridge, but I didn't want to disturb the person who was already under it. So I shot on top of it instead.

These two photos were taken with my ultra-wide lens. Even with a diffuser panel, it can't cover the 14mm-e field of view, so I take the opposite approach. (If you can't join them, beat them.) I set the zoom head to throw the narrowest cone of light, and then direct it toward only part of the image.



The flash is on a TTL cable and everything's being shot in manual mode -- TTL flash metering really is a waste of money. To get the shot of the graffiti without lens flare, I actually had to hold the flash behind my back. "Gobo" indeed...



Unfortunately the ambient light dropped too fast for me to get much more. I first used this technique shooting in narrow alleyways during daylight, so that's something that I'll have to try again for this assignment.

"Unfortunately the ambient light dropped too fast for me to get much more." I assume you mean to keep shooting handheld?


Yes, a CTO(?) gel on the flash would have been the best way to go, if I had such a thing.

Alas, my camera locks WB at "Automatic-Flash" whenever the hotshoe is enables, so I'm forced to use the test button to fire the flash during long exposures--no front-curtain flash possible, but I can live with my equipment limitations. This is meant to explain why I haven't bothered to get gels for my flashes yet, but since you noticed the blue color I guess the time has arrived.
Thought I could slip it past you, but I was wrong

I too prefer the first one--it matches the rest of my water photos and is my whole reason for shooting water at night, the smoothness and un-reality.

KeithAlanK Wrote:"Unfortunately the ambient light dropped too fast for me to get much more." I assume you mean to keep shooting handheld?

Well, um... yes. But I wanted to keep a deep blue sky. I can handhold this lens down to 1/4s even on the camera without IS, but I never actually tried to push it. Fact is, it was halowe'en, and I wanted to get home before 7pm.

KeithAlanK Wrote:This is meant to explain why I haven't bothered to get gels for my flashes yet, but since you noticed the blue color I guess the time has arrived. Thought I could slip it past you, but I was wrong .

I saw it because I had the same issues just a couple of months ago. The mix of colours of light in yours are nicer than the ones I had to deal with, so if it wasn't for the tell-tale blue glint, I wouldn't have noticed.

I took this using two flash guns. One was attached to the camera with a sto-fen diffuser and bounced off the ceiling, and the second one was placed off to the left of the flowers and bounced off the wall to create highlights.

To have tulips to take picture is great!! They are so beautiful flowers..

Shawn your pictures are very nice, the second one a bit dark... or maybe it is my monitor... It not calibrated...

Your flowers are beautiful... How you like your light box. I would love to see more of your pictures with your light box, I have one but my pictures are a bit soft I think... Maybe I don't place the light well...

Keith,
All your pictures of the plaza are very beautiful....
I am always a bit evious because I don't have anything similar here to go and take pictures...

Matt,
I like a lot your first picture... It looks really nice as if you were walking with at night with a torchlight...

RB,
Lucky you!
To have tulips at the time of the year for this assignment is great. I love those flowers....

G asked me to work with a picture for the introduction in the wedding album... I received from the Swantje's Mami a bouquet from the wedding decoration... It was beautiful, till I took pictures of it ...
Anyway, I had my invitation to the wedding so I got the idea, with the invitation and the flowers.

Here is what I got.



I took my picture with my D70 and a 50mm, a studio flash with umbrella as Matt has it in his setup.

I can't believe I never thought to do a "flowers" assignment.

RP, the soft lighting really suits the flowers well.

Irma, the flowers with the invitation looks very nice, and the exposure is well controlled. Are you using your Demb diffuser?

matthew Wrote:Irma, the flowers with the invitation looks very nice, and the exposure is well controlled. Are you using your Demb diffuser?

Thanks Matt...

Unfortunately I don't have an external flash for my nikon. I have the umbrela almost bouncing to the ceiling and a white board above the umbrella to reflect a bit in front of the flower.

I can use the Demb diffuser with the flash the camera has, but I have to hold it with my hand. I am thinking already if I could use a rope to fix to the camera, or maybe improvise a diffuser for the flash.