Guest post by Jo Christian OterhalsJo Christian Oterhals is an amateur that found new love for photography when photography went digital. He’s happy that new technology have given him the opportunity to show and share his work in a way never before possible.
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Used to the mediocre output of the built-in flash, lots of photographers dismiss using flash for lighting altogether. But if you upgrade to an external unit and you use it when and where it’s really useful, you’ll be able to achieve results you wouldn’t have otherwise.
These are the first 5 tips on this topic. The other 5 will be published in another article in a couple of days. So stay tuned!
Days are (on the northern hemisphere at least) still dark. This means that for most amateur photographers, daylight’s gone by the time they’ve got a few minutes to spare for photography. If you’ve ever thought about venturing into flash photography, there’s probably no better time than right now.
But there are many myths concerning this, the two biggest being that flash light is always ugly and the second that it’s difficult to do right. This keeps many from using it. Personally I don’t find it particularly hard, neither do I find flash light particularly ugly.
Below you’ll find a few lessons that I personally find useful.
Lesson #1: If a built-in flash is all you have, use it
Although most of the lessons here will tell you that light looks best off-camera, sometimes on-camera flash is all you have. You may not get photos sutiable for publishing in fashion magazines this way, but at least you’ll get photos that are better than they could have been.
This sensational photo by Flickr user kittenmoon proves my point:
A self portrait in front of a fantastic sunset made possible by a small P&S and a kiss of light from the built-in flash. Without the built-in flash, this would have been a photo of a silhoutte in front of a beautiful sunset. But with it, the photographer’s got a smashing self-portrait. In short, this may be one of the best examples that you should use whatever light you have with you.
The built-in flash can help you get rid of harsh shadows when photographing outdoors and in daylight, combined with high ISO it can help you get nicer indoor pictures, etc. You probably have a built-in flash. Use it.
Lesson #2: Equipment matters
Some people claim that great equipment doesn’t make great photographs. Up to a point they’re right. But when it comes to flash there’s still a minimum of equipment needed. At least you’ll need a flash, and regardless of what I said in lesson #1, you should preferably invest in an external unit.
If you don’t have one, now’s the time to buy. Go for an external flash with as much output power as you can afford. Preferably you should buy one that has a head that can be tilted and rotated. Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, etc., all produce flashes for their systems, but there are also lots of third-party vendors of flashes for your camera. This means that you have lots of options, and you’ll always be able to find something that suits your budget.
If you can, get one that can be triggered by your camera even when it’s off camera. Although most camera makers now have this facility built-in, some SLR models needs a second flash or a special triggering device to achieve this (most notably the Canon EOS series). If you’re on a tight budget, you can opt for radio triggers instead. They can be found on eBay for less than $50.
You’ll probably have to operate your flashes manually with these, but doing that is actually easier than it sounds at first. Personally, I use the triggers on the photo for just about anything now (click photo to see them on eBay). This kit may not suit you, but for me it does the job.
Lesson #3: Mix available light and flash when possible
If you normally shoot your photos using P or «green square», try flipping the command dial over to aperture priority.
On the fully automatic modes, the camera will normally shoot at your cameras flash sync speed – usually somewhere around 1/125 to 1/250 depending on what camera you have. It will completely disregard what shutter speed it should have chosen to expose the ambient light correctly.
Sometimes you may want to remove available light altogether, but in all I think those situations are fewer than the opposite. They do exist, however. See Lesson #7 for an example.
Lesson #4: Use second curtain flash sync
When mixing ambient light and flash, you’ll sometimes experience that shutter speeds drop too low to render everything sharp.
No need to panic, though. The flash will help freeze your subject and render it sharp or semi-sharp. The downside is if your subject moves. Then you’ll see «ghosting» or «speed trails».
This can look good, however, if your camera is able to synchronize flash to second shutter curtain (also called “rear curtain”), i.e fire the flash when the shutter’s closing instead of when it opens. With this function enabled, the frozen, sharp version of your subject will come after the ghosting has occured. The ghost effect will then look like speed trails and give you a natural sense of speed and direction.
Looking at the image I’ve used to exemplify this, taken by Flickr user keithpyt, you’ll see a great use of slow shutter speed and second curtain sync. The biker is nice and sharp, and the trails give you a feeling of speed. Had the photographer not used second curtain flash sync, however, it would have looked as if the biker flew backwards. The result is in this case a great photo.
So use second curtain sync as often as possible. You should probably leave your flash on second curtain sync all the time. (If you use a radio trigger set like the one I mentioned above, you may experience that second shutter sync is impossible)
Lesson #5: Light looks best when it come from anywhere else but the camera
You’ve seen it outdoors: Light almost never comes directly from behind your back. As long as you just have a built-in flash you don’t have much choice in the matter. But if you also own an external flash: Why insist that flash light should come from your forehead?
Direct flash will create harsh light and shadows, that more often than not is unflattering for your subject. If your subjects are close to a wall, deep shadows will dominate the background. And in dark rooms they’ll get the dreaded red eyes. In short: Unless that’s the effect you’re going for, avoid direct flash.
The solution is to get the light to come in from somewhere else but the top of your camera. What’s great is that you can do this without taking the flash off your camera. If you’ve got the rotatable and tiltable kind of flash you’ve got plenty of possibility to bounce light of walls, ceilings, etc. The ability to bounce will alone open a world of possibilities for creating more subdued indirect light effects.
In this example I’ve fixed a flash on my camera. I’ve rotated the head 180 degrees and tilted it a little upwards, so that it actually fires partly into the ceiling and a wall behind me. A nice side effect of this technique is that it creates a soft, nice shadowless light, almost like a large softbox. No deep shadows in the face here, and none in the background. A great side effect is nice and large catchlights in his eyes.
One shortcoming of this technique is that the walls should be white or as close to white as possible. If they’re not, the reflected light will have added some of the color of the surface it reflects from. Unless you’re converting your images to black and white later on, this is something you’ll have to be aware of.
If you’ve got the kind of flash that can be remotely controlled by your camera, this problem can be avoided by placing the flash off camera somewhere to the left or right of the subject.
End of part 1. Check out part 2 next week!
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