Flash question, basics

I'm just going to start using my flash as a fill light on and/or off camera.

What I wanted to know is, if I'm shooting in manual mode (using handheld meter) and/or aperture priority let's say.

Say the meter reads 5.6/200 (ISO 100).
I would set the flash to manual, then in that case, does the camera tell the flash what setting it is shooting at. The flash will by default be shooting at full power, then I adjust from there?
ie - half a stop less, full stop more, etc, etc...

Thanks.

jacob smith said:

I'm just going to start using my flash as a fill light on and/or off camera.

What I wanted to know is, if I'm shooting in manual mode (using handheld meter) and/or aperture priority let's say.

Say the meter reads 5.6/200 (ISO 100).
I would set the flash to manual, then in that case, does the camera tell the flash what setting it is shooting at. The flash will by default be shooting at full power, then I adjust from there?
ie - half a stop less, full stop more, etc, etc...

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Normally, if you're going to meter your flash that way you hook your meter to the flash and do a test pop that tells you what f-stop to set the camera to. You set up your light and then meter to see what the exposure would be. The light from the flash is nearly instantaneous, so the shutter speed is almost irrelevant if you're just interested in light from the flash (many people will just always go with 1/125 or 1/250th).

The other way to do it is to pick your exposure based on how you want the background to look (but with a shutter speed no faster than the max flash sync speed on your camera) and then adjust the power levels on your flash to get the lighting effect you want on your subject.

Strobist has a wonderful series of tutorials about how to do this. Beware, though. I've known several people who went into that site, didn't come out for 2 days and then went out and loaded their credit cards buying strobes, stands and umbrellas. Fortunately he's a big advocate of doing things on the cheap.

jacob smith said:

I'm just going to start using my flash as a fill light on and/or off camera.

What I wanted to know is, if I'm shooting in manual mode (using handheld meter) and/or aperture priority let's say.

Say the meter reads 5.6/200 (ISO 100).
I would set the flash to manual, then in that case, does the camera tell the flash what setting it is shooting at. The flash will by default be shooting at full power, then I adjust from there?
ie - half a stop less, full stop more, etc, etc...

Thanks.

Click to expand...

The flash meter will tell you the aperture that you need to use to correcly expose the subject given the current flash output.

Typically, you would do one of two things:

1) Decide on the desired aperture for the DOF that you want. Then, repetitively meter your flash and change the flash output manually until the meter's output matches the aperture that you want.

2) Decide on the flash output that you want (for power saving reasons, for example), meter the output and set the aperture on the camera. You can also change the ISO setting to effectively make the flash more or less "powerful".

As long as you are under the max flash sync speed for your camera, the shutter speed wont effect the flash exposure (since the duration of the burst of flash light it much shorter than the duration that the shutter is open). Playing with the shutter speed will however alter the exposure of the rest of the image, often to excellent creative effect.

As previously mentioned, strobist.com is an excellent place to start.

Tim

Erik DeBill said:

Strobist has a wonderful series of tutorials about how to do this. Beware, though. I've known several people who went into that site, didn't come out for 2 days and then went out and loaded their credit cards buying strobes, stands and umbrellas. Fortunately he's a big advocate of doing things on the cheap.

Click to expand...

One can do some wonderful stuff using a flash on a wireless setup (one can buy a PC Cord and some hotshoe adapters on the cheap). Living in a grey climate it makes for a good if inconvenient to carry lighting setup up. I recently got a 12x16 soft box and a lighting boom so I can mount a light for macro work on a tripod and put the light wherever want. That mixed with a small reflector and I am in good shape.

If you work outdoors with flash and modifiers, then skip the lightstands as they do not work. You need to get cheap tripods that can mount your lighting gear. The reason for this is because lighting modifiers and kites are very similar in character when the wind blows. They move. Kites fly. Lighting modifiers break when they fall over.

Lacking a light meter and being familiar with my histogram and RAW converters I can judge exposure reliably enough. The steps are.With a flash meter the workflow is the same. Some people call this chimping when done with a histogram. Some attach negative connotations to the term which I cannot comprehend. Why would anyone insult another photographer for using their tools to take control of crafting an image?

Anyway, you are on a fun path.

enjoy your day,

Sean

Sean DeMerchant said:

One can do some wonderful stuff using a flash on a wireless setup (one can buy a PC Cord and some hotshoe adapters on the cheap). Living in a grey climate it makes for a good if inconvenient to carry lighting setup up.

Click to expand...

I'll second the good but inconvenient part. The radio slaves seem to make things much much nicer, but they cost far more than a cheap PC cord. In either case, getting the flash off the camera makes a huge difference.

They do really nice things with ice, so now's a good time in lots of the US

Here's a shot from two days ago. Camera hand held, 580EX on a PC cord lying on the ground, pointing up at the icicles. Shoot, check histogram and LCD, adjust flash, lather, rinse, repeat.

Erik DeBill said:

Here's a shot from two days ago. Camera hand held, 580EX on a PC cord lying on the ground, pointing up at the icicles. Shoot, check histogram and LCD, adjust flash, lather, rinse, repeat.

Click to expand...

Hi Eric,

Have you looked into using diffusion with your flash off camera yet? You can get much softer light which would help retain detail in the specular highlights on the ice. As an example consider these mushrooms:


You can get a nice soft even light that enables handholding in the field. What lighting modifiers add another dimension to the shape of the light by making it come from many directions. A cheap sheet of white foam core will do. Simply bounce off the foam core and get a custom white balance off of it to get reasonable color (measuring the color of the lightsource).

By changing the size of the light source one also changes the depth of lighting about the subject you meter for (softer/larger light source reduce the existence of flash black).

some thoughts,

Sean

Sean,

I like the methodology as it is simple and light.

Did you post-process the b.g. or is that your wide open 100mm Macro?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

I like the methodology as it is simple and light.

Did you post-process the b.g. or is that your wide open 100mm Macro?

Click to expand...

Thanks Asher. The background is actually selective gardening done with a pair of scissors and some rearrangement of other matter. Picture a silly fool lying on moist but not quite wet ground moving and at times cutting individual blades of grass (fir needles in this case and perhaps a leaf or three). The shot itself is at f/10 which means the boke must be crafted. I often shoot long series looking at the resulting image and using DoF preview as I clean out the boke. I am less invasive on public lands.

enjoy your day,

Sean

Sean DeMerchant said:

Have you looked into using diffusion with your flash off camera yet? You can get much softer light which would help retain detail in the specular highlights on the ice. As an example consider these mushrooms:

Click to expand...

I've got an umbrella that I bounce the flash into most of the time. Unfortunately, those icicles were maybe a foot off the ground (the flash was only off-camera by about 6 or 8 inches in that picture) so there just wasn't any space for it. I might have figured out a way (reflector disc on ground, shoot flash down into it) if I'd realized it would have a salutary effect on the icicles. In my mind I was going for very hard light shining on and refracted through the ice, so it didn't occur to me to try and diffuse it. I now wish I'd done shots comparing the effect with and without (I'm not sold on it, since transparent ice is very different from a translucent or opaque object like a mushroom).

Sean DeMerchant said:

... I recently got a 12x16 soft box and a lighting boom so I can mount a light for macro work on a tripod and put the light wherever want. That mixed with a small reflector and I am in good shape.

If you work outdoors with flash and modifiers, then skip the lightstands as they do not work. You need to get cheap tripods that can mount your lighting gear. The reason for this is because lighting modifiers and kites are very similar in character when the wind blows. They move. Kites fly. Lighting modifiers break when they fall over.
...

Click to expand...

Details please. What is a lighting boom?

Today I found myself in the position of (a) shopping for a lightstand and (b) advertising for sale one of those Bogen monopods with the little built-in tripod feet, and then the lightbulb went on over my head and I thought, "Hey, wait a minute..." ;-)

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Nill Toulme said:

Today I found myself in the position of (a) shopping for a lightstand and (b) advertising for sale one of those Bogen monopods with the little built-in tripod feet, and then the lightbulb went on over my head and I thought, "Hey, wait a minute..." ;-)

Click to expand...

That bulb didn't go off for me until after I had the lighting stand on order. The lighting stand is much taller, so there IS a difference, but I could have gotten started without it.

Nill Toulme said:

Details please. What is a lighting boom?

Click to expand...

A lighting boom, mounted (with a counter weight for balance) on a regular vertical light stand, will e.g. allow to position a lightsource directly overhead of the subject. You'll need to make sure that the total weight doesn't exceed the specifications of the stand.

Bart

Hey guys thanks for the help, I've bee away from the forum for awhile and shooting really.
Hoping to get back into it, especially since I had LASIK surgery done recently and the freedom from glasses and contact wear is now gone.
But I appreciate the help a lot.
Will see whether or not I can shoot some pics this weekend and post them to get some reviews and/or help.
Thanks again.

Nill Toulme said:

Details please. What is a lighting boom?
http://www.toulme.net

Click to expand...

Sorry, I missed this. A lighting boom is simply a boom arm like on a crane but made from lighting components.

In this shot you can see the boom arm mounted atop a broken (center column is now permanently at its lowest) tripod which makes a good solid base for studio lighting gear due to light modifiers propensity to act like kites.