LIGHTINGCHAPTER TEN

 

You can often achieve all of your lighting controls by simply working with available light and simple reflectors and diffusers.

Obviously the sun is the best natural light source, but at times this source is way to bright.

For portraits, too much contrast is not flattering.

Strong light, produces dark shadows under the eyes, makes lines and wrinkles more pronounced.

Lighting

Diffusers: large piece of white cloth that serve to diffuse light, casting a very soft shadow.

The best diffusers are the ones that collapse easily to become portable.

Lighting

Reflector: Usually a piece of glass that gives you the ability to bounce light around your image.

When working with a “silver” or “gold” reflector, one of the biggest issues is the reflector will bounce too much light onto your subject.

Fix this by moving the reflector further away.

Lighting

Collapsible reflectors are easy to carry and come in a variety of colors including white, silver, and gold.

Big pieces of white card board, paper, or foamcore will work just as well for creating a white fill.

Don’t forget you can always shoot INTO the sun.

Position your subject with his or her back to the sun, which will cause a nice rim light, or halo.

Lighting

Narrow Lighting: Turning the subject away from the main light source, and using the shadowy part as the main source of light.

Broad Lighting: The subject is exposed to the main light source, not the shadowy part of the light source.

Lighting

RANGE OF FLASH IS ABOUT 10 – 15 FEET. FILL: Uses the flash to fill in shadows. Typically used for

backlit situations (shooting in bright light, but subject is in the shadows)

RED EYE REDUCTION: Occurs when the light from your flash bounces off the retinas as he or she looks into the lens. This mode works by firing a flash, or the camera’s autofocus assist lamp, to close the subjects pupil.

CANCEL: Simply deactivates the flash. Used when flash is not needed,

Flash Photography

FLASH EXPOSURE COMPENSATION: A flash power adjustment control. Allowing you to increase or decrease the power of the flash.

FLASH WHITE BALANCE: Ability to white balance with your flash. You will need to white balance with your flash

because in many situations your flash is not the only light source in the room.

Flash Photography

When shooting with a flash in a low lighting situation, everything outside of the zone of the subject will be underexposed (dark limbo space)

If you are gunning for a quick shot, this will be your only option, but if you have more time you have two possibilities to improve your shot. 1. Higher ISO 2. Slow Sync Flash

Flash Photography

As you increase your camera’s ISO, it becomes more sensitive to light, which means you can shoot in lower light.

Shooting in low light with no flash, and high ISO creates a natural look, but you may need to use a slower shutter speed, thus causing the possibility of blurriness.

High ISO Low Light Shooting

If you have Shutter Priority Mode, try to lock at a good motion stopping power.

Anytime you switch to a higher ISO, you run the risk of creating a noisy picture, meaning many of the individual pixels might begin to behave strangely, sometimes getting stuck and appearing bright white.

High ISO Low Light Shooting

One problem with using flash in very low light is that, while the flash is capable of exposing your foreground properly, everything in the background lies out of range, creating a black background.

Slow sync mode uses a combination of flash and a slow shutter speed to expose the foreground and background properly.

Slow Sync Flash Mode

The flash exposes the foreground, freezing any motion, while slow shutter speed allows the camera to capture a good exposure of the background.

This is a special scene mode, found on most high end cameras, and some lower end devices.

Slow Sync Flash Mode

Believe it or not, using flash during the day time is actually more useful during the day time.

Using your camera’s fill flash, will throw enough light on your foreground that the camera will expose both the foreground and back ground properly.

You can use you fill flash during the day, when dealing with a bright background, shadow producing hats, trees, or even buildings.

Using Fill Flash in Bright Light

External Flash

RANGE: Built in flashes are usually very small, therefore they have a small range, less than ten feet.

PROPENSITY TO RED EYE: very prone to producing red eyen effect, because its positioned so close to the lens.

UNFLATTERING POSITION: Light almost always comes from overhead, so firing a flash directly into someone’s face rarely looks natural.

External Flash

No Creative Control: Since built in flash can’t be moved, you have very little control over your lighting effects.

Slow Recycle Times: Most built in flashes take several seconds to recycle, which can cause missed shots.

EXTERNAL FLASH can eliminate all of these concerns.

To use an external flash, you must have a camera with a flash hot shoe.

External Flash

Power: Higher range gives you a longer range, but you may not need such a high flash range, so consider this before making a purchase.

TTL metering: Through the Lens metering, make sure your device has this.

Zoom: If you are looking at a flash unit, specifically designed for your camera, it should offer the capability to zoom automatically, based on the focal length you set your lens to.

What to look for in an External Flash

Tilt and Swivel: You want a flash head that can at least tilt, and possibly swivel. Gives you creative freedom.

Exposure Compensation Control: Most likely your camera will provide this, but if not make sure you find one that provides this.

Slave Control: If you want to work into multiple flash lighting setups, you’ll want a flash system that allows one flash to trigger other, multiple slave flashes.

What to look for in an External Flash

Gives you much more illumination than normal flash.

The most significant advantage of external flash is its capability to bounce light off other surfaces.

On most cameras with the tilt capability, your flash will automatically adjust its exposure.

Direct flash also has the advantage of flattening facial features. (eliminates shadows under eyes, makes nose smaller, etc.)

Shooting with External Flash

Like any light source, an external flash will cast a shadow behind your subject.

Eliminate this by using an off camera flash cable or flash bracket.

This will result in your subjects body hiding the shadow.

Getting Your Flash off the Camera

Getting Your Flash off the Camera