Messing around with flash photography

March 13th, 2009 · 5 Comments
education · photography

I usually HATE using flash on photos – always seems to ruin any sense of mood or feeling in my pictures. But then I read an excellent tutorial over on the digital photography school about ‘Darkening with Light’. Inspired by the images that seem to have no background whatsoever, and interested in the notion of creating an interesting effect in crappy lighting situations I thought I would give it a whirl.

My dad had recently given me some of his old analog camera gear to muck about with, including a flash unit that can be triggered by another flash. According to the tutorial, if I could figure out how to turn down the flash on my Nikon D80 to minimum and aim the remote flash at my subject from close range and funky angle, I might get some interesting shots.

In a single session on a sunny afternoon in a fairly bright room we were soon getting shots like this!

The only trick was to set the remote flash to full blast / manual and fiddle with shutter speeds. Nothing fancy, no calculations just good old trial and error.

Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/20.0
Focal Length: 40 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Here are some more shots taken using this technique:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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5 responses so far ↓

1 mollybob // Mar 13, 2009 at 3:29 pm

Thanks for putting that up! I also liked the link you put in Flickr. Very helpful. A perfect excuse to buy more equipment ;)
2 John van Ruth // Mar 16, 2009 at 8:01 am

Great shots of big Kev!!
Please pass on my best regards.
Thanks for the very educational description of how this is done.
JvR
3 Stephen Downes // Mar 19, 2009 at 7:47 am

Fabulous – some really brilliant portraits there. The white’s a little off on the golf ball.
4 mseyfang // Mar 20, 2009 at 9:56 am

Stephen – golf ball, white, I don’t think so!
Tis a yellow plastic cricket practice ball (lobbed over my fence from nearby glenelg oval). If you would like to be convinced, place a golf ball atop a beer bottle and observe the scale. Don’t forget to drink the beer first.
5 More photo pheckery - from flash to the pan | Learning with the Fang // Mar 25, 2009 at 8:32 pm

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