Off/on Camera flash for weddings
I know that natural light is best, but what if you have none come day of the big wedding? Do you guys use off camera flash at all? I'm thinking that artsy off camera flash is something I want to start experimenting with but since I shoot weddings most I didn't know if it would even be worth it. I would not be able to do light on a stick, holding 2 things at once is not my cup of tea. I would like to invest in radio transmitters cause I'm sure people and objects will get in my way at receptions. Is there one that you can use but still have your flash on your camera and one off? I use nikon d200 with sb 800 and have and second sb800. I have read through a lot of thread but can't find advice for exactly what I need to know. I would like to stay under $250 but would also like them to work more that 15 yards apart. If I can attach the transmitter to my camera and still have my flash on the hot shoe, what do I do with the transmitter? Also, I know this could be under the accessories section, but I was hoping you wedding peeps would know more about my needs. Also, can I see some picture of examples of your off camera flash? Thanks!
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Yongnuo (SP??) RF602s sell on ebay for $100. That's one trigger and four receivers. I use mine to trigger my two SB600. One for the room, one in my hand off camera. (You said you didn't want to hold anything; you could just put one on a stand and one on a bracket?). The receivers have 1/4" mounts so any old school heavy tripod will do for holding without having to worry about sandbags.
(i hope that helps!)
Hi! I'm Wally: website | blog | facebook | IG | scotchNsniff
Nikon addict. D610, Tok 11-16, Sig 24-35, Nik 24-70/70-200vr
Not at all. flash is an integral part of the arsenal which can be used as main light, fill light, and balancing natural light.
As far as off camera flash goes..the effect you are trying to achieve with off camera flash is soft directional light in most cases. In a variety of situations you can achieve this with straight bounced flash off a wall/ceiling combo. I only use true off camera light for portraits. Go ahead an get your radio triggers, I just wanted to make you aware that you can achieve soft directional light in candid shots by other means.
See examples of straight bounce..soft and directional!
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Bridal prep, I generally bounce a gelled flash off a wall somewhere in the room. This works well because I am not moving all that much for a while.
For portraits, I fire a lightstanded flash through a brolly triggered with IR.
Ceremony, flash on camera with lightsphere. Note: I NEVER shoot portrait orientation with the flash on camera. I plan on cropping the other direction. This makes it so you don't have to worry about those nasty shadows.
For reception: one flash on camera (w/ Lightsphere) as the master and one or two flashes on lightstands (with lightspheres) through out the room as slaves. It works well.
Matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
Bottom line- No wedding photographer should be without flash skills. They are absolutely required for so many reasons that I don't have the time to re-type. Just learn flash, both on-camera bouncing and wireless triggering, and practice practice practice.
Having said all that, mmmatt and Quarik know what I'm about to say next lol! ...I definitely LOVE ambient light, I avoid flash at all costs if I think the ambient light is flattering enough, and I have definitely built my style around natural light.
I feel that unless the couple is getting married in a rec center with fluorescent tube lights, there is probably some ambiance that should be captured in at least SOME if not MOST photos. The bride and groom don't want always perfect exposures, they want to remember their wedding evening the way they ACTUALLY remember it- dim, emotive, romantic, etc. Some photographers feel that shadows are evil and must be filled at any cost, and that "noise" is even more evil. I just don't seem to be wired this way; I LOVE deep shadows and low-key imagery, and *grain* just makes an image seem all the more real to me...
I'm not trying to lessen the artistic merit of all photographers who use flash, because as I said I LOVE to use flash when the scene merits it. Dramatic studio / strobist lighting is TONS of fun, and reception / "party" lighting on a dance floor is pretty much the only way to go. But I AM saying that you shouldn't just blast everything with flash without thinking long and hard about what the natural light looks like...
I probably have far lower standards for "low light" and higher tolerances for grain, and I understand that this style may not be for everybody. I'm not the best at math, but for example I think this shot would be down around EV 0... (ISO 3200, f/1.8, 1/60 sec...)
(And I've also recently hit f/1.4, ISO 6400, and 1/30th...)
Take care, and sorry I don't have the time to re-type more information. Good luck learning flash! It is a ton of fun once you get the hang of it...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I do a mix of bouncing off of walls/ceiling and my favorite, holding my arm out as far as possible with a softbox or using my orbis.
Hi! I'm Wally: website | blog | facebook | IG | scotchNsniff
Nikon addict. D610, Tok 11-16, Sig 24-35, Nik 24-70/70-200vr
EDIT: Unless you wanna look like a dork like me and literally hold your flash off camera to your left. I don't shoot above 800 iso and comp with my flash. Two sets of rechargeable batteries are a must.
Hi! I'm Wally: website | blog | facebook | IG | scotchNsniff
Nikon addict. D610, Tok 11-16, Sig 24-35, Nik 24-70/70-200vr
This is helpful. Thanks for posting! Actually, the whole discussion is helpful, for someone who doesn't use flash very often.
Lighting properly (and to fit your style) is about so much more than just putting light on your subject to make the proper exposure. If you shoot natural light all the time, you surely wouldn't plan on getting the same look from a 12 noon shoot as you would a golden hour session - each type of light has it's own look and style. Using a flash is exactly the same way. What do you want your end result to look like?
I'll never forget a job I did with a "new" second shooter once (he had done plenty of work on his own, but this was his first time working with me) when we arrived at the reception and it was outside, with next to no lights. Previously he had bragged about being able to shoot everything in natural light, but here he had a serious problem - there was no natural light of any kind. To make matters worse, he had next to no experience with an on camera flash and did not know how to proceed.
When it comes to the actual products, I would suggest that you invest well. Nothing is more frustrating than having flash triggers not work when you are under the gun (plan for backup triggers). I have previously used Elinchrom Skyport's and loved them. Pocket Wizard +II are darn near perfect to me - simple and they work everytime. Right now I am using the new Pocket Wizard TT5's and love them. My normal second shooter uses Radio Poppers and loves those.
To mount both an on camera flash and wireless trigger at the same time will depend on your system. Some are built with this in mind (new Pocket Wizards, Radio Poppers), some will require you to mount your flash in the hot shoe and use a cable to tie your transmitter to your cameras PC jack.
If you want to learn about using off camera flash checkout the book by David Ziser called Captured by the Light.
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Matt, that was a stunning example of flash use. Which fast glass options are you preferring, f2.8 or sub f2?
How messed up is the WB when you shoot off things like the barn and then what are you using for a white point when you edit as I guess the WB is different every time so you can't batch process and not everyone is kind enough to wear a white shirt?
When you bounce do you leave the flash on auto zoom or do you set to something manually to control the flash more/make it more directional?
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
Well the WB is a double edged sword when you are wall bouncing. True, the white balance is different when bouncing off a wall because the light reflected will change colors based on wall color. If you have walls with multiple colors you will have different white balance with each wall you bounce off of. In most cases this is not drastic and still allows for batch processing in smaller groups of 10-20 images which works for me just fine. At a wedding there is almost always a chunk of white somewhere either from a colar, a dress, a table cloth or whatever. One of the biggest advantages of wall bouncing is that the bounced light comes back so large that it envelops the ambient light and makes it less likely that you will have multiple light colors in the frame. This usually allows me to have consistent skin tones in groups of people or from the brides face down to the bottom of her dress. this is a huge pet peeve of mine and is actually shown quite profoundly in Matt Savilles example. No offense to Matt, who I feel is one of the best wedding shooters on these here pages, but looking at the green skinned girl in his color example is exactly what I try to avoid. Since our eyes > brain translate lighting color differences differently than our cameras do it is very hard to see that kind of thing before the shot is taken. By bouncing off another surface of ANY color I would have a consistent light temperature on both subjects and still get the gorgeous directional light that he is showing in his b&w. Of course, bouncing in this manner all but prevents one from shooting jpg and leaves it up to raw to make subtle corrections even though the overall coloration throughout the image is far more consistent than any other on-camera flash technique.
Depending on how much ambient is mixed in via your camera settings, the white balance will change, and if there is too much you don't get the consistent coloration that I am talking about. So in this way your shutter speed, f-stop and iso change your white balance. Since I adjust those settings quite a bit for effect I don't worry so much about WB until post. This technique works best in darker rooms where it is feasible that the flash can overpower most of the ambient. In my gallery I show examples of mixed lighting colors and motion blur due to ambient light, and that is an important part of learning the technique. Not to say it is hard, it isn't, but you need to be conscious of the amount of ambient light you are letting the sensor absorb both in terms of motion blur and light coloration.
I typically just set the camera to awb and be done with it since I am going to batch WB 10-20 raw photos at a time anyways. I do sometimes do a custom white balance prior to shooting in a room and that often times makes thing far more consistent but still not perfect since there are potentially many surfaces that are reflecting the light back to my subject and ambient light level changes as described above. It seems to me that if my in-camera wb is closer to what is correct, my camera does a little bit better job of determining proper exposure but I don't know that for fact.
I have tried zooming the flash head and it doesn't seem to make a difference in most cases. A tight beam of light may give me a stronger bounce off the wall but is less likely to hit other objects that are closer to me and would otherwise reflect the light back stronger. Basically I don't know what is best and I doubt it makes any difference in the grand scheme of things. One place where this technique can potentially bite you is with wide angle lenses. You don't want to see the wall that the light is hitting for obvious reasons. In this case zooming the flash may be of benefit, as is pointing slightly over your shoulder. The best thing to do in this case however is to use a snoot. That makes the light coming off the flash head far more directional than does the flash zoom and makes it easier to keep it out of the field of view for wide angle lenses. I only really like the snoot when shooting wide though. For a snoot I use a bottle coozie with the neck portion cut off and the seam reinforced and then flipped inside out. Mine is a rolling rock beer bottle coozie and is kelly green on the inside. The color of the coozie makes no difference because the light color is all relative to whatever it is bouncing off and the colors all mix together by the time it hist your subject. Also gels are useless and only serve to reduce your light output from your flash unless you are bouncing off a static wall and trying to incorporate strong ambient light.
I hope that all makes some sence! I am obviously a big fan of this technique and have worked very hard to find its quirks, but I'm sure I will find more as time goes on. Rooms with mirrors are very difficult for example, but every room is doable. I still use ceilings and rear walls sometimes. I sometimes point the flash straight at the wall ans sometimes up a tad for a more downward effect to the lighting. Every now and again you will blast someone to the side of you in the face and they might get a little upset. your subjects however are less likely to end up as blinkers. no shine, dimensional lighting, the ability to shoot reflections, the ability to blend lighting colors, the ability to shoot vertical groups without hotspots, and the overall ease of shooting an on-camera flash are just a few of the reasons that I love this technique!
Matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
Matt, fantastic post and I hope you don't mind if I come back to you again when I've had a chance to play.
So the key points, use ETTL and dial in the comp during the first few shots and take it down a bit when getting close to walls, leave it on auto zoom unless shooting wide and work with manual exposure (I always do in these occasions).
I use a 5DmkII and have the 85mm f1.8 so will have to give that a bash. Every time I play with that lens I love it, but then for anything 'real' it stays in the bag and I revert to the 24-105 and 70-200 f2.8.
Oh, last question (for now), you are just doing this with the 580, nothing more powerful etc?
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
yes to the first part. I only use the 580 but have always been curious to try the sunpack (622 I think) since it is the only canon ettl'able flash that has more juice than the 580. To much though and you do risk ticking people off when you blast them in the face! Ha! Take that Granny! jason (blurmoore) I think has one and he may or may not have of tried this technique. I keep forgetting to ask him.
ask awa y with any more questions but I am out of town till monday and my internet access may or may not be available. Feel free to PM though and I will respond when I can. that goes for anyone.
matt
also another point to note. Just because I say fast glass is needed doesn't mean that I shoot everything at f2. I often shoot higher f-stops but the fast glass is what will allow you to get focus in a dimly lit room. If you can get focus with your 24-105 it should work just fine. by lowering your f-stop and raising your shutter speed helps your flash overpower the ambient.
matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
thanks again for taking the time to help me out!
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
Not in my experience. When a wall or ceiling is far away, I ALWAYS zoom the flash in as far as it will go. It REALLY helps the light carry, and if the wall or ceiling is just 20-30 feet away you could be saving yourself 2-4 stops of light by zooming all the way on.
But I'm with you on the "slightly over your shoulder" method. I call it the "backwards crooked gangster hat" method, because I always have my flash head at diagonal angles both horizontally and vertically, pointed backwards and upwards, like a rapper's hat on MTV or something. :-P
If you have a flash that will rotate back to the RIGHT, (older flashes only rotate back on the left) ...then you can shoot horizontal and vertical shots without having to change your flash at all! (of course the flash will be bouncing to one side for horizontal shots and the other side for vertical shots, but that isn't always the end of the world if a subject is facing roughly in your direction. Although I DO intentionally point my flash head towards a wall that is in the direction a subject is looking, if they're facing away from me at a more extreme angle. The light bounces back into their face and looks GREAT!
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
OK, I think I know why I'm not able to give good advice, my name isn't Matt..... must be key.
Matt(2), thanks for helping out and I will certainly give that a go at the next shoot I have where I'm using flash. Nothing at all in the books currently as I'm leaving the country soon, just waiting for the final date, so not taken bookings, although some are hoping I'm delayed as here in Egypt I'm classed as a good wedding photog...... when I'm back in the UK I will be at the bottom of the barrel hence trying to learn as much as possible. Mastering this technique will certainly help.
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
No, no, no. not right, not left or up or down... you manipulate the light like playing pool! you plan the direction of the light by bouncing off the wall that will give you the effect you want. Yes a flash that swivels both ways is what you want. When shooting vertical you need to be able to hold your camera either side up depending on which wall you are bouncing off of! Plan the shot don't just pick a position and leave it. Some walls are better than others based on color, angle, windows, mirrors, distance, or height. Think that you are setting up a studio strobe and point your flash where you would put the strobe. I am swiveling my flash nearly every shot.
Sorry for the rant! I'm out of town but I will take a pic of the snoot in a couple days. It is really just an insulated beer bottle cover with the narrow end cut off and turned inside out. Some will unravel if you don't resew the seem.
Matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
I only said "backwards gangsta hat" because that's what my flash USUALLY looks like. It's pointed in some general backwards direction, at one angle or another. If you live in Orange County or So Cal, you know what I mean. I guess they're not gangsters, more like "bros"... But again, you gotta live around here to know what I mean...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
In another life I'm an engineer so I tend to ensure everything has an extra margin of safety. A battery pack even if its's driven by AA's gives me a longer period of time between replacing batteries, so less change I'll have to swap during the event and miss a shot. For that matter I like to keep a second pack and extra fully charge'd AA's within arms reach.
-jim
Matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
I'm here to learn so please feel free to give me constructive criticism to help me become the photographer I desire to be.
If you have a really good battery rebuilder in your area you might want to check out buying used Quantum battery packs for your flash......I really hate having a bunch of AA rolling around and then having to charge bunch of them.......I have bought used Quantum's for years (well after I bought 2 new ones and they died a few years later......) and I found a company locally (AllPak Battery) that would rebuild them for under $40 each....Quantum wants almost $100 to rebuild a QB1......
If you are shooting with anything like a Nikon SB900, then al Jacobs has got cables for the SB900 to fit his black box and that is one great looking and spec'ed battery............actually if I remember my pricing a BlackBox was chaeper in the long run than buying the 36 rechargeable AA's and chargers for 2 flashes: that is 12 per flash - 4 in the flash and 8 in each battery pack plus 1 extra set just incase......always need the extra set just in case.....the best chargers were over $80 and only charged 8 so that is 5 chargers to do all 36 at one time...I do not have the time to keep changing batteries out of chargers.......so I can easily justify $175 for a BlackBox and charger from Al Jacobs...so 2 blackboxes and charger are still under $400....
My Website My Blog DPChallenge
If I ever get a battery pack, I'll get an All Jacobs Black Box...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I love my La Crosse BC700 charger, too. $29.99 on Amazon, and one of the most high-tech chargers on the market. I bought three
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum