Flash talk - Elaine and Swartzy, this one's for you!)

divamum

C&C always welcome!

It's the little things in life. After struggling for a while to wrap my head round how to balance flash+ambient, I think I have FINALLY learned how to use it in situ in the shoe, largely thanks to an exchange w/ Swartzy and Elaine earlier last year, and subsequent reading of planetneil, Joe McNally, Strobist and others. This is a large "ballroom" space with a high ceiling and, to give you some idea of how far away I was, this was taken with the 135L (not significantly cropped). The flash is a lowly 430ex. I was THRILLED when I chimped and realised... I did it, I did it! :rofl

This isn't quite SOOC, but has only had minor adjustments (could use a little more contrast boost, actually). Unmodified flash was bounced at about 45* up and 45* to the left. I'd have liked to bounce up more to lose that shadow entirely (not all of it caused by me, iirc, but the ambient lighting too), but the ceiling was too high. FWIW, that wall is easily 15ft (or more) behind them - I'm amazed that the 430ex could produce enough power to produce that (especially after being bounced). How does one avoid that in this type of situation?

liflander

That's nice lighting! What settings are you using? Manual exposure with TTL flash metering?
Cheers,
Mark

LiflanderPhotography.com

Qarik

if your flash was 45 up and 45 to the side then, you are stilling getting plenty of direct flash on them so you get the shadows and also the a touch of specular highlight on their foreheads. You also lose much of the directionality of the light. You have to use a foamie thing on the the flash head to block all the lgiht going forward so it ia ALL bounced. Usually you can avoid the foamie altogether by point the flash 45 up and slighty behind you but if you are using a telephoto like the 135mm then this may not work because your subjects are so far away that you have to point your flash forward somewhat.

a thread in weddings you might find helpful

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=178738

divamum

@liflander

iso 1600 (I had the camera set for shooting the performance - in this venue that invariably means high iso!)
f 3.2
1/160

Qarik, yeah, I didn't have a foamie w/me - hadn't been planning on taking flash shots, just found I had some time before we started the rehearsal and figured I'd grab some shots while I was waiting. Even if I had though... how would that have worked with the high ceilings? Everything around was dark wood, and the ceiling was probably 20ft or so. Wouldn't that have meant I didn't have enough flash power if I blocked the forward spill from it? Here's the same shot when the flash didn't pop - slightly different angle but same settings, which gives you an idea how dark it was....

Icebear

AND . . . if you had popped everything off the ceiling and not had some light going forward, you would have had NO light on the bottom side of the book or the hand holding it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.