Wedding - Ambient & Flash

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

Towards the evening, the sun had set it became more difficult to shoot without a flash.
I opted to use a speedlite attached to camera which I ensured was always pointing at the ceiling.

During the first dance, there was club style lighting which I always wanted to incorporate in the images. As the ceiling was really high and I knew the first dance was going to be a lively one I didn't want to have to be waiting for my speedlite to recycle. I set an ISO of 1250 and an aperture of f/2.8 in the hopes my flash could fire as quick as I needed it to.

I metered for the ambient light and needed around 1/10th of a second which I stopped down to 1/20th as I didn't need the scene fully exposed.

Limited in positioning due to the large crowd around the small dancefloor, I had to make do where I was and during the slow dancing parts I was able to light the bride and groom using the ceiling as a reflector while also allowing ambient light to expose on the sensor thanks to the slow shutter speed.

However, when the dance became more lively and I had to keep moving my camera quickly to track along with the bride and groom, severe motion blur occured. the shutter speed was so long than the ambient light was exposing the bride and groom also leaving ghostly light silhouettes behind.

As I was too busy shooting away, not wanting to miss a moment I didn't check the results til after the dance.

This meant a lot of the images turned out very poorly.

I should have checked during the shoot, I may have missed a moment but I would have also had better images.

I just simply need to increase my shutter speed enough where only the lights were exposing and not the bride and groom.

In all I think this part of the wedding was very poor for me (thank god for second shooters) and that I could have done much much better if I simply slowed down.

Car

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

Wanting to expand on still life work and working with flash & ambient lighting I wanted to try and photograph a Car.

Wanting an urban setting but one that still showed light, planned to light the car using 2 speedlites I had access to.

Wanting a large depth-of-field to keep everything in focus, chose an aperture of f/11 and an ISO of 100 to retain the best image quality. I placed my camera on a tripod and metering for the sky needed a 0.8 second long exposure. I then assessed image to see where to place my speedlites.

ISO 100    f/11    0.8sec    24mm — ISO 100 f/11 0.8sec 24mm

I positioned the light in TTL mode to camera right, parallel to the front of the car and placed it high on a light stand facing down. I did this to light the top hood of the car and also to try and light the inside slightly.

Here I find the composition is off, as the car isn't filling the frame it makes it seem small. The hard light from a reflector bowl is creating a pool of light on the floor in which the car casts are hard shadow.

I repositioned the car to a more appealing position and took anothe test show.

Seeing the car was reasonably lit all over I then took a test shot without the flash to see how the ambient light was hitting the car.

ISO 100    f/11     1/3sec    31mm — ISO 100 f/11 1/3sec 31mm

Though the car in underexposed the majority of the image is still being lit with ambient light.
I increased my shutter speed by 2/3rd stops, now being at 1/3rd of a second.

Adding a the flash back in resulted in this image.

I like the underexposed background and the lighting on the car however the side of the car is a little too underexposed so I wanted to add a second light.

I attached a softbox to a second light, also in TTL mode and asked a friend to hold the light in various positions while i triggered the camera. Having smoeone there to help made the process go a lot quicker as I could see the results instantly and direct changes

The first image you can see the very hard shadow being cast on the fence. Though a soft box is attached to create a greater spread of light without stepping too far back from the car, relative to the car the soft box is very small creating hard light.

I asked to move the light higher and angle it down slightly, you can see the shadow is a little better. And finally, the third image, angling the light downwards even more gets rid of the shadow completely while light the side of the car.

Happy with the light I finally gave a wider angle to allow for any cropping that may need to occur and take the shot.

A difficulty I faced was the setting sun. Each minute passing the light was dropping fasting and faster with my final image being taken at a 2 second long exposure.
Overall I'm happy with the final image however circumstances on the day, namely my friend and the temperature at nightfall seemingly disagreeing with each other very loudly caused me to be rushed. Ideally I would have also had a 3rd light which I would have placed around the back of the car to produce a rim light helping to separate it from the dark background.

Ideally a light setup something like this

Click here to see a gallery of all the images taken

Alcohol using ambient & flash

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

Wanting to try the bokeh effect with still life I hung the lights from a boom and tried to get as much distance from them to increase blurring of a shallow depth of field while still trying to have them fill the frame.

I placed my to fill my frame and pre-set my focus.
Opting for a single light setup I pointed a snoot so the beam of light would stream across the subject and not spill onto the background.

I metered for the fairy lights using my cameras built-in meter. Typically with still life you can slow your shutter speed down, which would have been perfect however due to the fairy lights being fairly flimsy and needing adjusting a lot they were swinging and took a very long time to become still. I needed a faster shutter speed of 1/80 to reduce motion blur, which resulted in needing an ISO of 800 and the lens' widest aperture of f/2.8.

I took several test shots to arrange composition and once satisfied I metered the flash lighting with a light meter making sure the light meter was reading at ISO 800, readjusting the light until f/2.8 was the correct exposure.

I metered from the Jack Daniels bottle as it was the brightest label. The result however, due the angle of the bottles and light is that the Jack Daniels and Martini bottles are well exposed however the Haig club bottle isn't due to the bottles face not being in the light.

I moved the haig bottle so although the light isn't hitting the bottles face, the light will pass into the bottle through the side illuminating it from within as the light refracts inside.

My biggest problem with the image is the fairy lights don't quite fill the frame edge to edge.
However I was very happy with the results from concept to output as little experimentation was needed due to my understanding and planning.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images from the shoot

Katie Ambient + Flash

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

For this shoot I wanted to mix flash lighting with the ambient light of fairy lights.
I wanted the fairy lights to be thrown out of focus to create a bokeh effect white lighting Katie with the flash.

The problem I knew I would have is that the fairy lights are very low in power and as both model and I will be holding them, very prone to movement so slow shutter speeds would create motion blur.

To achieve a bokeh effect, I need as wide an aperture as possible, f/2.8 in this instance, and create distance from the subject to throw them out of focus as much as possible. I set a shutter speed of 1/100 which would let more ambient light in than my maximum sync speed but also reduce motion blur from the fairy lights. At f/2.8 and 1/100 shutter speed I needed an ISO of 500 to expose for the ambient light from the fairy lights.
I turned the room's lights off so only the fairy lights are creating ambient light and closed the blinds so the room was in total darkness.
I metered my strobe setting the light meter to ISO 500 and adjusted until the light exposed Katie at f/2.8. Here is the resulting image.

The like of bokeh balls look interesting however cross Katie's face.
You can also see how the flash, hitting the light in Katie's hand is overpowering them making it hard to tell they're lit up at all.

A few shots in I noticed the side Katie's hair is laying is blocking the light, in some instances it created interesting shadows, but others it cast her full face into shadow.

I tried changing the angle I was shooting from to see how an image can change without moving the light or subject.

I really like these images. The unused barn doors you can see in the background helps to give a sort of behind-the-scenes feel and the shadows cast on Katie's face don't seem to be ass problematic compared to shooting head on.

Wanting to try and eliminate big shadows from Katie's face, I moved the light to the other side of Katie to avoid hitting her hair. I also switched lens to a 105mm macro lens knowing longer focal lengths produce a shallower depth of field.

However I noticed a problem when shooting with a macro lens, particularly in the studio.
I remetered the lights to achieve a f/2.8 aperture. However, at close focusing distances, the circle of light that hits the cameras centers grows, meaning not 100% of the light going through the lens is exposing the sensor. Nikon cameras fortunately report the change in what is known at effective aperture. However, I didn't pick up on this change in effective aperture until I saw the metadata. This resulted in ever so slightly underexposed images. Not so much the images are unusable but enough for me to realise it's important to be careful in noting the aperture the camera is reporting.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images from this shoot.

The term bokeh refers to the way a lens renders light when thrown out of focus. It is typically seen are round globules in shallow depth of field images.

Ambient & Flash

January 09, 2018 in Ambient & Flash

Taking a photograph in ambient light typically means changing the cameras setting's to attain the correct exposure. Taking a photograph with studio lighting allows you to set desired camera settings and adjusting the lights to match.

Mixing the two means mixing the two ways of attaining the correct exposure.
We already know that shutter speed does not affect exposure in flash photography due to the extremely quick burst of light, leaving aperture and ISO to affect exposure. We also know that ambient photography is affected by the entire exposure triangle.

If we set our ISO to it's lowest to gain the best quality file output, this leaves aperture to control flash exposure leaving shutter speed to control ambient exposure.

For these images I first metered the ambient light in camera, I wanted a large depth of field to keep the sky in focus so I set an aperture of f/16.

At ISO100 this gave me a shutter speed of 1/50 to expose correctly for the sky. However, I was hand holding the camera I wanted a a faster shutter speed to ensure a sharp image. Changing the ISO to 250 allowed me a shutter speed of 1/125.

I then set up a studio light pointing at Katie and metered the light, making sure to set the ISO value on the light meter to the same as my camera, and adjusted the light until it read f/16 as the correct exposure.

ISO250    f/16    1/125 — ISO250 f/16 1/125

Here you can see how lower aperture affects both ambient and flash exposure. If I wanted to affect the flash lighting only, I would also have to compensate with a higher shutter speed. As I opened the aperture by 2 stops I would have to increase the shutter speed 2 stop to 1/500.

However, altering the shutter speed alone would only affect the ambient light.

ISO160    f/8    1/125 — ISO160 f/8 1/125

Here all camera settings are kept the same except the shutter speed. You can see on the left at 1/20 Katie and the background are at the same exposure creating a flat looking dull image.
At 1/20 you could normally expect movement blur from camera shake however the flash helps to freeze motion, similar to my studio splash shoot.

On the image to the right, with 2 and 2/3 stops difference in the shutter speed, you can see a dramatic difference in the background due to the ambient lighting being underexposed. Katie is also a little darker than the left image as she was also being lit by some ambient light.

Problems can occur with ambient and flash when equipment limits desired camera settings.
For example, if I wanted to shoot Katie at f1.4 to create a really shallow depth of field, even at ISO100, particularly in daylight would require a shutter speed quicker than 1/200 (maximum flash sync speed).

To remedy this you could use HSS and reach a higher shutter speed without worry about shutter sync issues or opt for a neutral density filter.

ND filters screw onto the front of a lens and act a little like sunglasses. They block out the light entering the camera by a determined amount of stops allowing a really birhgt scene to be shot at wide apertures and low shutter speeds.

Click here to see a gallery of all the images taken on this shoot.