I recently broke my flash unit. I have lost the ability to use TTL flash so I am trying to learn how to set my flash manually. What do you know about this? It seems pretty complicated.
~Andrea
Andrea, how could you ask me such a question?!?!?! Just kidding. What a daunting topic. One I'm just learning myself. With snow just on the horizon, it is one I will be spending quite a bit of time inside working on I'm sure. So lets see if I can help Andrea here.
Ok, needing to use manual settings with the flash on camera will be just as confusing as with the flash off camera. For this post, I'm going to be using off camera flash for the most part so you can see the effects more clearly.
Meet Dickens. He's a gargoyle I have protecting my den from evil spirits. LOL. Seriously he holds the door open.
This photo was taken with the flash on camera bounced off the ceiling. Nothing special just a beginning.
Now, for straight flash photos using no ambient light I don't worry so much about the shutter speed. I tend to keep it to the max sync speed. Usually 1/200 or 1/250 sec. Aperture controls the amount of flash getting to the sensor, shutter speed controls the ambient light. Ok, now what I do is pick the aperture I want to work with and try to match the flash output to that aperture.
In this photo you can see that the flash out put is way too low. I'm working with an aperture of f/5.6 here.
So, I increased the output a bit. And it was still a little too dark.
And I came up with this after a few tries. I've added a gold reflector to camera left to try to balance the shadows a bit.
I should note that this one is at f/8. I was having trouble finding a balance with the f/5.6. Same process though. I could add another flash on camera left instead of the reflector and adjust it to balance as well. The whole process took 6 shots to come up with the last that I liked.
Now, what about bringing the ambient into play. This should work as on camera fill flash as well.
I've learned over the last month or so that it is not as hard as it sounds but not so simple either, if that makes sense. It just takes practice and experimentation. I'm going to use the ambient as fill and my flash as the main light here. I metered the scene with my in camera meter and then dropped the exposure 2 stops to use the ambient as fill. Here is what that looks like.
It may be a bit too dark but I'll just go with it. This is f/5.6 for 1/25 sec at ISO 400. Now I add the flash. Try to balance it so he is not too brightly lit and hope it does not spill into the background too much.
The flash did brighten the background a bit but not enough for me to worry about it. I could have solved this with a flag to block the light from hitting the background but it's not too bad.
So just for fun, I moved the flash behind him. Ambient first then with the flash going off.
The flash snuck some light off the ceiling and brightened his face a bit. A bonus as his face was a little too dark in the ambient. This was just for fun to show what some nice back lighting is like. I would need some light coming from in front of him as well.
I am still learning this however so I may have some things a little off. I recommend that everyone interested in manual flash and or off camera flash check out Strobist. David Hobby is a genius. I have much to learn from him.
This is just a start. I will be experimenting and practicing with manual flash. Both on camera as fill and off camera as both main and fill. I will be writing more on this subject as it interests me and I hope it interests a few of you as well.
Now, get out there and experiment with your flash.
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