Mail Bag Question #2

Manual Flash. How many of you just clenched your jaws. I did just writing it. Here is my latest mail bag question.

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.

Chris.

Mail Bag. #1.

After my interview with Lani Barbitta, she suggested to me that I do a mail bag where readers could send me questions and I would do my best to answer them. I'll research the heck out of them.

So, how to get hold of me? Well, email works the best. Either here on the blog chris@chrislemmenphotography.ca or through my flickr mail, pilphoto@yahoo.com. The flickr mail may be the fastest.

So here we go......

Today's Mail Bag question comes from my good friend Lani Barbitta.

"Hey Chris, I have kinda a writer's block (if you may) when it comes to the concept of storytelling in a photograph. What do you feel about the process and how would you describe it?"

Wow, that's a big topic for my first mail bag question. What Lani is talking about here is Photojournalism. Telling the story with one or a few photographs. What I've learned about this is you have to think of it in the same way as writing a story. You need the who, what, where, when and how of the story.

• Who - Make sure you have a who in your photo.

• What - Try to show what is going on.

• Where - Make sure it is a wide enough view that the viewer can see the surroundings.

• When - Day, night, spring, fall, winter. Something like that.

• How - Try to show how the what is being done by the who you know where. LOL.

These can be in the caption for the photograph but should be obvious in the photo itself.

Well, that's all fine and dandy but how the heck do we accomplish that? Practice. Yup. Practice seeing those five elements. Telling a story isn't about the subject like we do with portraits or landscape. It's about the action going on. The firefighters battling that huge blaze, the rescue workers working to free someone from their totalled car. Or a city official cutting the tape on the new hospital wing. Still showing the who, what, where, when and how as best we can.

Let me try to show this in one of my photos here. It's a group of kids running a race. I'll add a caption.

Jacob Lemmen (who) pours on the steam (how?)  in the 2 to 4 year old race (what) at Fork Lake Subdivision (where) this past Labour Day weekend (when).

That should tell a pretty good story of what was going on. I think this would work well in the local paper or the subdivision's news letter.

I can turn this into a photo story by adding some extra photos.

This one should go before the one above.

Fork Lake Subdivison kids warm up before the races begin this past Labor Day weekend.

Then these would follow the original photo.

The three legged race claims another victim in the 5 and up category.

Parachutes and rubber balls equal popcorn!

Finally what it's all about, kids scramble and this photographer gets pelted as candy flies from the parachute.

Of course, this is just my understanding of the process. I may be way off. My thoughts on this may evolve as I practice. I hope this helps anyone who has been thinking on this subject. Those of us on Unit 5 in the NYIP Complete Course In Professional Photographer certainly are.

Please leave me a comment on this or send me a question for the mail bag.

Chris.