The light was still very hard. Is it because I was to close to wall? Is there a miniumen distance to bounce from a wall?
Thank you for your help! But the closer you are to the wall, the smaller your light source will be. I have a question about bouncing the flash. Next week, I will take photo in area a blue colored ceiling and cream colored walls with tungsten lighting.
There is still possible if i use bouncing technique or i must use direct flash to get more natural color on my photo, Thank you for your help Neil. I would still bounce the flash, but try to mostly use the walls. The essential thing here is that you have to shoot in RAW. Any flash directed at any surface and the light just disappeared. It was like firing the flash into a sponge!
I had no choice but to use direct flash but just made sure that my settings were aimed at optimal exposure without the flash being overly obvious. The results — pretty damned good. My reputation stays intact and my images still outshine even the best of those taken on mobile phones! This particular location will have high ceilings and with the number of people that will be gathered there, bouncing the flash will be difficult.
Then you have to adapt your technique. Hello Neil when i hold my D3S on Vertical position iam experienceing a problem with bounsing flash over my right shoulder how do you deal with such situations? Anoop, this is one of those instances where a flash bracket would really help. But I just hold the camera with my hand under the grip ie, the camera above, cradled in the palm of my hand.
So I just do it. It takes a bit of practice to get used to it. Hi Neil, a bit off-topic here but regarding the 3rd pic — do you have any advice about focusing on very low f-numbers?
How on earth can you pull it off with moving subjects and is it something that you can achieve consistently? Is the solution 10fps??? I assume you focus and recompose. Clifford, using wide apertures in low light is going to be a hit-and-miss thing with moving subjects. In the photo shown there, the bride was static — it is a posed shot. So f1. For moving shots.. No magic to it really, I believe. With moving subjects I often just use the central AF point, or one of the other active AF points close to it..
May be I was late to discover your website but now after having discovered it, I have gotten addicted to it. I ve learnt so many things which I could ve never learnt otherwise. But I m not fully satisfied with my exposures which I think are either slightly underexposed or over exposed most of the time. So, now I want to switch to manual mode for which I would apprecaite highly if you could reply my following queries :. I just want to click the sharp and perfectly exposed pictures like you do.
I am a very eager student who want to excel in photography and you valued guidance and advices would be highly appreciated. Thanks once again. About your exposures.. Regarding your questions … 1. Use TTL flash … and then you can use nearly any setting of your choice while you under-expose the available light , and your camera and flash will take care of the exposure.
If it is too bright, dial down your flash exposure compensation. Thanks a lot Neil for bothering to reply.. It was really really nice of you.. After going through your links only, I started clicking in RAW.. I would definitely try to follow what you have advised… thanks once again.. Hi Neil, I am french. I recently bought your book in english because your book is not translated yet, one day maybe and I have improved my photos thanks to you. I have a question when I bounce the flash with your black foam :.
My flashgun employs auto zoom to cover a range of focal lengths from 24 mm to 85 mm, it depends which focal length I use. So do I need to manually adjust zoom coverage with the black foam? In case I do, which one do I must select? I usually zoom to the longest focal length when I bounce flash like that. Hi Neil. My wife bought your book along with a bunch of other photography titles a little while ago.
Too funny. Highly recommend your book! And, great job on your blog. Took me a while to grasp that the camera can be on full manual and the flash would compensate in TTL. I shot alongside a photog at a political fundraiser who kind of snickered a comment about my flash pointing the wrong way.
The walls and soffits are a mustard yellow color, and the main ceiling panels are medium toned wood kind of like a natural cherry. Any suggestions on how you might gel for that if at all? I also have an Expo Disk, but rarely use it as it kind of slows me down during the course of the night e. But that would be my usual starting point anyway. Hi Neil, Great information………….
If so what are your thoughts regarding the product. Possible use , on camera flash outside with nothing to bounce from? Last week I was shooting a wedding in a dark church with a high ceiling. Still it was possible to bounce my flash from the high ceiling.
I think that I used almost full power of my flash ttl to get the light bounced back from te ceiling at my subject. In this situation I was getting some strange pictures where it sometimes looked has if I had used direct flash instead of bounced flash. That means these pictures where very over exposed looking, like 2 or 3 stops to much flashlight was used in direct flash mode. The next day I did a test to find out what the problem was.
I made pictures from my girlfriend at night in an open field where there was nothing to bounce flash. I tilt my flash straight up just like I did in the church and set the output in manuel mode at full power. A big suprise for me: despite the fact that my flash was pointed straight up to the dark sky there was a lot of flashlight on the face of my girlfriend. It looked bad and very much over exposed, the same effect as the day before in the church. So this means that when bouncing flash from a ceiling and using almost full power of the flash because of an very high ceiling there is a lot of flashlight falling straight on your subject too!
Alwin, did you use a bounce card or have the diffuser panel down? These could throw direct light forward onto your subject. Where is the other wizard, on camera or tied to the flash like the one we see with your 2nd camera girl with the famous Black Flag demo article?
Are your stobes both set to manual? I believe that is the only way you can go once you take the flash off camera without a cord mount. Let me know, as previously stated, love your work and the help you provide. Is your updated book due out next year a drastic change from your current one?
The on-camera speedlight is bouncing behind me into the umbrella, which then reflects light onto my subject. This flash is TTL controlled. The off-camera flash giving the accent light behind the couple, is set to manual output, and is fired with a pocket-wizard attached to the flash. This then fires the slave flash in the background. Hi Neil, Just wondering how you would approach the following scenario: Fishing out in a canoe, in the middle of a lake no glassy water and choppy enough that you cannot have too slow of a shutter speed.
Besides, there is obviously quite some limitation regarding the bulk of the equipment I can take with me and how much I can move around to set up reflectors… Thanks, Chris. Hi there Chris … since it is off-topic from this specific article on bounce flash, it is better suited for discussion on the new forum. Neil, i did not use a bounce card or diffuser panel. Just pointed the flash upwards to the ceiling.
But has I said i did a test to confirm this and if you like I can mail you the pictures. The solution, by the way, is of course using the Black Foam Thing to block the light that is going forwwards.
Thanks for this excellent article. Notice in the setup image above, not only is the camera rotated but so it the flash. I purposely positioned him close to the wall here because this is a common issue that many beginners face. A huge ugly shadow on the wall, ever get one of those? I rotated the flash once again to point straight up at the ceiling, which in this case was white.
This is why you want a flash that can rotate and tilt in all different directions. Better, now he has light in his eyes again. Okay, this is where it gets tricky in this room. Do you remember what I said about bouncing off of colored walls? Notice anything here? But in this case, because I was shooting RAW format files , it was fairly easy to correct using Lightroom. The stronger or brighter the color of the walls, the harder it will be to correct in processing — even with a raw file.
I tried with purple walls once, was a nightmare and I had to convert the images to black and white to save them. As a final comparison to bring it all together for you, I did one last test using a couple of small diffusers I have.
One came with my Godox Vii speedlight kit , and the other I bought long ago. You can even use an elastic band and a piece of white cardboard, that will give you the same results. The images on the top row are using direct flash or a relatively small reflector still and that shows in the big shadows under the chin and flat lighting on the face. Do you agree that the three images on the bottom row above are better than the ones above?
I had a heck of a time getting the little diffusers to stay on the flash and took more time mucking around with them than it did to simply rotate the flash. Darlene is an educator who teaches aspiring amateurs and hobbyists how to improve their skills through her articles here on Digital Photo Mentor, her beginner photography course , and private tutoring lessons.
Really, you need to think of the surfaces around you as a sort of mirror, and think of your flash as a laser beam. Then ask yourself: If you fired the flash at the wall, how would it reflect? And you can fine-tune the shadows even further by thinking about the intensity of the angle. A steep angle will reflect back steeply, whereas a shallow angle will reflect back shallowly.
And note that the darker the wall, the less powerful the bounce will be. White walls are great, but black walls will get you barely any bounce at all. Flash exposure can be a tricky subject. If things are too bright, you can narrow your aperture or drop your flash power. Then take another test shot, make any necessary adjustments, and continue until you get the result you want!
Instead, bounce off walls and low ceilings. Some flashes have a bounce card built-in. This is the solid-colored piece that slides out at the top of your flash. Larger bounce flash accessories can create softer light or allow for more control. However, this technique does create nice soft lighting, eliminating that harsh direct flash look. In flash photography, the shutter speed determines how much ambient light is in the image. This will leave the background dark and only lighting with the flash.
Sometimes, however, you want to use only your flash as your light source. Mixing the flash and the ambient light can leave your photo with two different color temperatures. Or, maybe the ambient lighting is really bad and you only want to light with the flash. Whatever the case is, the answer is shutter speed. A bounce flash can create impressive, directional lighting effects — and all you have to do is turn the flash head towards a large, neutral colored surface. Because of that, bounce flash is a great technique for photographers who are new to flash.
While off-camera flash offers the most flexibility, bounce flash offers creative lighting effects , simply, while keeping gear and accessories at a minimum. To get the best results with bounce flash, just make sure you understand a few essentials, like finding a neutral-colored surface to bounce off of and adjusting the shutter speed for the best results.
Leaving your camera on its default settings will produce blurry results. Share with friends Share. Show Comments 0 Hide Comments.
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