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Five Great Flash Techniques To Improve Your Photography Light
So, you moved your light off camera (very good) and looking for some new ways to explore more lighting options. Some of the most interesting light can come from doing the unexpected with your flash.
Here are five great techniques to boost your off camera lighting.
After exploring those five you'll have a great toolbox for shooting pictures with off camera flash.
Poor Man's Ring Light
Ring light is one of the lighting modifiers very commonly used in the fashion industry. The fact that light is coming from all around the lens provide a shadowless image on one hand and a great halo effect on the other.
Packing two Canon speedlites and a pocket wizard this mod may not be suitable for the poor, yet if you have the lights around, you'll get a semi-pro ring light for the price of two ball bungees.
Light That Comes From All Around
By mingthein
Some of the hardest things to light are specular objects. (Or simply put - shiny things). Watches; Cell phones; Sony PSPs, you know, shiny.
The "secret" to light specular object is that you don't pour light directly on the object, but on the surface that reflects off the object. The light from the reflected surface will bounce from the specular object to create nice and even light.
By using Plexiglass (or Perspex) you can create evenly lit surfaces to bounce light off from. (If you only need one bright surface, use this hack; If you want to learn more about specular objects and lighting in general check out Light Science and Magic - the best lighting book ever).
Light Drinking
Some objects are best lit from down under. Fluids in translucent containers are a great example of such objects. To create some great underlight, you can use an everyday cardboard box topped with a piece of glass. Hiding the flash in the box will help you eliminate flare.
Stick Your Flash In Some Fruit
Is this a radioactive apple? Nope, it is an apple that had a core-removal surgery and a flash transplant follow up.
Coring the apple makes it thinner so it is easier for light to go through the apple. When the light from the strobes hits the apple and goes on the other side of it, it looks like the apple itself is the light source. For more details on this shot go here.
Use Whatever You Can Get For Diffusion
By strobist
It is a well known "secret" that people look their best under soft light.
Unfortunately, both small strobes and big strobes produce hard light. (The smaller the light source, the harder the light).
Fortunately, almost any semi-translucent material can be sued as a diffuser. Starting with garbage bag as was done in this picture, through sketching paper, baking paper, white t-shirts and more.
Even More Hacks
- 49 Awesome Photography Hacks, Mods And DIY Projects
- 43 Photography Hacks, Mods And DIY Projects
- DIY Lighting Hacks for Digital Photographers
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[Flash image by Yanik Chauvin]
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Comments
Cool!
Cool!
Ring and Diffusion
Wow - I'm surprised you didn't try to strap four SpeedLites to get a perfect ring!!!
Good idea on the garbage bag. White for diffusion or to bounce light off of, and black to subtract light.
re: 4 is for wooses ;)
How about six? Actually four will give an even better result with a halo going up/down as well as right/left
great tips!
Hey,
Allot of great ideas, with wonderful flash techniques. I like the apple. I appreciate all the tips and hacks
Nice !
Nice's difuse light.
I'm Brazilian Man.
Simple and perfect light composite !
Congratulations !
Awesome! Thanks
Awesome! Thanks
1 PW with 2 speedlights?
Does anyone know what the trick is to get two speedlights to trigger with one Pocket Wizard receiver? When I wire up my Pocket Wizard Plus II units like shown in the DIY ringlight photo above only one of the flash sockets will work. It says in the manual that a reciever is needed for each speedlight. I'm wondering if older units will trigger 2 speedlights, or if I need to hack it somehow? Thanks!
Can't you slave the other
Can't you slave the other flash?
in the example here they are
in the example here they are using a pocket wizard Plus receiver which has two out-ports for lights. Your pocket wizard plus II transceiver does not have this feature... I'd try some sort of splitter?
Thanks!
Good post - thanks. Found you via Digg (& dugg it).
The strobist garbage bag diffuser is genius!
We've got a similar post (less amazing DIY tho) which might be of interest:
Become a lighting guru
Lighting tips
Nice post thanks.
You know, I was curious as to why you called it the poormans ring light?
The camera, lens and all the other accessories don't belong to a poorman.
But thanks again I really enjoyed the article.
The great thing about light is of course how much you can play when you know what happens in the camera body and of course post shoot.
Making pictures, ahhhhh! Cheers. Take care.
re: poorman, lighting gugu and more
@ Oli - Thanks for sharing the guru piece. I tend to agree with the entire sentiment of it, most of all with the "practice" say at the end. There is just no other way - shoot, shoot and then shoot some more.
@The Baldchemist - well, you are right, most of the gear there ain't cheap at all money wise, (and add to this the sentimental value) however, the ringlight itself was a mere 3 or 4 bux. :) So the camera and lens to the rich (at least rich in mind) . The LEDs - to the poor ;)
Stick Your Flash In Some Fruit
Yeap, I used this in my older work: The lava orange and the old white rose. You can get really nice effects.
I recommend it!
ettl fill flash
the new pocketwizards offering ettl remotely have proved a boon to me for simple fill flash!
re: pocketwizards
I bet!
I'm still waiting for those guys to come up with the a device that support Nikon CLS. As you said it is bound to be a winner.
Thanks
Thanks for the nice techniques. Perhaps, it's time to buy an external flash unit for my DSLR.
Light Drinking
I just shot four images using the "Light Drinking" technique. Lighting from underneath is a very cool technique.
re: Light Drinking
Thanks for sharing those. The results are wonderful.
It's funny how three of your objects are photography related and the forth is hard drink. cheers.
The photography-related
The photography-related items are accidentally related to photography. My office is setting up a recycling center and we're trying to collect things that are harder to recycle - small electronics (cell phones), batteries and CFLs are the examples. Originally, I planned on doing a white seemless background, but then saw this entry on your blog and remembered the "invisible light" technique from Light: Science and Magic and figured, hey...
The rum, well, I enjoy shooting it...
putting 2 flash gun with a
putting 2 flash gun with a 70-200 looks like some hell to lift.
but hey, it's a poor man light.
great tips.
re: heavy
The poor man has to work :) although the price of 2 flash units and a PW will probably cost close to a "real" ringflash AND be heavier
Flash
Thanks for a great article.
Thanks for sharing. Some great ideas
Cheers
Delme
this article
Great advice. Most people have no idea how damaging a bad flash photo can be!
Flash use
There is no end to creativity. Thanks.
Poor Man's Ring Light
No way that's a poor mans ring light. :)
for light drinking
and another option for light drinking on this link. There is an ease to use lightning setup.
Distance from flash to diffuser
For the "Use Whatever You Can Get For Diffusion" section - moving the diffuser away from the strobe reduces specular lighting but it's easy to get overspill unless the area around the subject is going to soak up the light.
That's why it is going to work with the woman sitting in the water. It's at night so the light will just fall onto nothing and be absorbed.
A subject in daylight against a far horizon would work.
A subject against a wall would not give the same diffused appearance.
For that you would need to start with something like a Lumedyne.
re: spill
Quill, this is true. when working with any diffusion over flash, there may be spillage.
one of the ways to avoid it is to use flags, another,as you indicated is to shoot against a huge void.
Some of the softboxes out there have apart of the box that exceeds the diffuser. providing some sort of diffusion control. "regular" softboxes, umbrellas, and garbage bag will all suffer from spill if not flagged.
So transparent
Personally, I would never sue a semi-translucent material.
Continuous light
A very newbie flash question from me.
Do the flash lights in the photo "Light that comes from all around" give continuous light? Is that possible with normal flash units to switch them on and just light up the subject for a few seconds (or more) while not being triggered by any camera?
Thanks for your replies.
Great photos by the way, very inspiring!
re: Continuous light
Marc,
Sadly no,as the name hints, strobes can only strobe light, and can not provide Continuous light.
You can use halogen, Tungsten or CFL for continuous light, however, the intensity of those lights is lesser than the one of a strobe.
This is true.....
this is true. However, the nikon SB-800 flashes in that example (along with the SB-900 currently on the market) have a "modeling light" feature which can be activated with a button on the strobe or with the apertute preview button on the camera. when activated this feature causes the flash to strobe at a low power in rapid succession for a little over a second which projects a light that, although still only a strobe, looks like a constant light for about a second or so... this often helps with framing and focus in a dark area.
Thanks!
Just wanted to write a big thank you for sharing these tips. I just happened to stumbleupon this site. Very nice.
Terry Lee.
www.gigphotographer.com
Continuos Light
Excellent post. Well explained with some great tips.
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