Lighting your subjects with a flash can be fun but using your flash on camera and pointing directly at your subject can produce harsh, unflattering light. During a recent gathering with some of our Photo Club members I demonstrated the use of “Off Camera” flash photography.
Here are the basics of what was discussed.
Image 1 : Flash is fired directly from the camera producing harsh light and shadow. Light is everywhere. ISO 200 f5.6 35mm 1/200th sec
Image 2: Before I settled on a “Base” exposure of the image, I decided that the only Ambient light I wanted affecting my photo was the light from the lamp. To maintain control of the camera I was set to “M”- Manual.Now I could dial in the Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO to my liking. This allowed me to keep the room feeling “warm” with the tungsten light hitting my subject.
ISO 200 (for sharp, noiseless image)
F-Stop f5.6 (Gave me good Depth of Field for the subject)
Shutter Speed 1/10th sec (I shot slow to get ambient light from the lamp; subject will be frozen with flash exposure mostly)
Image 3: I felt that our subject was getting lost in the shadow of the background so I added a flash to the background (Gelled with a ¼ CTO Gel). This allowed for some seperation of the subject.
Image 4: The foreground was a little too dark so I added another flash to camera right. This flash was again gelled ¼ CTO to match the yellow light cast by our lamp. The light was also placed in a softbox with a grid to control light spilling everywhere.
Image 5 : I then added a third flash to Camera left; again gelled and in a softbox with grid.
Image 6: To add a little creativity to the scene, I added a blue gelled flash to our light at camera left and shot through a Bogo (cardboard cutout) to resemble light coming from a window blind.
Image 7 : Club Member, Julian, thought that we should add an element of suspence by shooting towards our Tri-fold wall while adding another flash behind a knife-weilding hand !
Image 8 & 9: Close up images using the same flash & power / camera settings