Tag Archives: off-camera flash

Photography

Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting

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If you pay attention to available light especially the time of the day in certain locations, all you need is one Speedlight to create great settings for portraiture. Naturally having a gorgeous model like Lindsey Martin makes it easier. 1/250sec @f2.8 ISO 100 outdoors. Backlit by sunlight and fill flash with Speedlite 580EX in home made beauty dish.

1.Set your Speedlite to fire on manual power

There is nothing scary about firing your flash on manual.

In the film days, you needed another piece of equipment–a flash meter.

With the near instant feedback and histograms in today’s cameras, figuring out exposure on manual is easy.

Dividing the Guide Number by the flash-to-subject distance will give you a good ballpark number for the aperture setting.

(Guide Numbers are always given in ISO 100, so you can easily find it’s equivalent for any ISO)

I usually set the flash to 1/8th power and sometimes even 1/16th power.

This reduces the flash-to-subject distance and allows my Speedlites to recycle fast so that if you’re after quick changes in expression, they keep up.

Continue reading Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting →

Photography

Tiki artist David Schultz

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David Shultz with a background in animation works on wood carvings and Tikis these days. Canon 40D 50 mm 1/320 sec @f5.6

Local Riverside artist David Shultz loves all manner of art but what appears closest to his heart is working with wood especially Tikis.

A chance meeting with Dave at our favorite local coffee house led me to visit and spend an hour with him at his home recently.

Dave uses palm fronds he finds and makes some exquisite work from them.
Dave uses palm fronds he finds and makes some exquisite work from them.

There’s no mistaking how serious he takes his art.

On his front yard stands his thatched roof workshop.

He proudly tells me the his ‘shop’ has few metal parts.

The entire structure is held together by wooden dowels and glue. Continue reading Tiki artist David Schultz →

Tutorials

Using daylight one flash for a different mood

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Wendy Mayberry's picture taken at about mid-morning looks like it was taken at dusk because she was able to use one Speedlight using a shutter speed of 1/800 sec f5.6 ISO 100 Canon 60D 35mm setting on 18-200 zoom. I added more warmth in the color in post production to create the illusion that the picture was taken at dusk.

Rainy or cold weather should never discourage photographers from leaving the house.

Some of the more unusual and interesting pictures happen when the sun is not dominant in the heavens.

Landscapes have a different feel when clouds appear in the sky.

Compare the picture that Wendy took with what the scene was like in the picture on the left. Her models brought a change of outfits which made her pictures even better.

As with my previous field trips, weather threatened the field trip for my Digital Wedding Photography class. Continue reading Using daylight one flash for a different mood →

Photography

Do it yourself Speedlite grid spot

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As a group, photographers a.k.a artists who can’t draw can have obsessive personalities.

Just look at their gear.

They’re constantly tweaking something.

So it’s no surprise once they ‘graduate’ to lighting, they want to shape their lights with modifiers.

Thankfully, many are very generous in sharing their ideas online.

When I built my beauty dish, it wasn’t an original idea.

Who knows now who came up with it in the 1st place.

“Borrowing” from one person is plagiarism?

“Borrowing” from a bunch of people (online)? …Research! Continue reading Do it yourself Speedlite grid spot →