Tuesday, October 21, 2014

In a flash...

Excuse the pun but it has been a pretty illuminating week for me where flash photography is concerned; and I guess I should step backwards a little and explain what I mean.

It all started when I received an email about the big 5 Day Deal of photography gear (videos, textures, plugins, software, training, etc) - in all $2000+ for a one time price of $89. If you participated, then you know just how awesome a deal it was, but if you missed it, my commiserations as it's now gone away.

Anyway, I started looking through the videos and was going to start looking at the ones from Lindsay Adler when I saw a series from Zack Arias, entitled One Light. All I can say is wow! Fantastic video series on flash photography and not only did he explain it all in a manner that even I could understand, he also demonstrated it all in a clear and easy to follow manner. It certainly highlighted everything I've done "wrong" in my previous efforts at flash photography. Two of the biggest things I now know after watching the videos is:

  1. Use manual mode for both the camera and flash
  2. I don't need to spend $hundred's on strobes and accessories - I have pretty much everything I need now (other than a few minor items)
My next big opportunity to flex my new found techniques will be at halloween as I will be running a "photo booth" for a costume party. I'll be using a pretty minimal setup of one SB-900, one SU-800, an Ezybox softbox on a 15ft stand and a white backdrop. Don't need any more than that as I can get good directional light from the Ezybox with minimal overspill as I won't want to light up the background and surrounding area too much - so no umbrella for this.

And now the wall of text is over, I bet you're wanting to see some photos. Well, I didn't have a "model" handy, so had to resort to using myself as the subject matter. Of course, I've never been that great at taking selfies but I certainly like the much improved lighting I got from this very basic setup of the Ezybox sitting a couple of feet above the camera position, in line with the lens.

Ian - Portrait2
Ian - Portrait

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