Digital Photography Guide

Let’s look at the sequence of events when combining flash with long exposures. When the flash fires during exposure, the normal sequence looks something like this (note there may be some slight variation among different camera brands or flash modes):

1. Press shutter button.
2. Curtain A opens.
3. Flash fires.
4. Frame is open for some period of time (as determined by your shutter speed).
5. Curtain B closes the frame, ending the exposure.

This is the normal sequence and doesn’t really have a name, except to help differentiate it from our next scenario. With Second Curtain Synch (also sometimes called Slow Synch) the sequence goes like this:

1. Press shutter button.
2. Pre-flash fires so the camera can measure and adjust the intensity.
3. Curtain A opens.
4. Frame is open for some period of time (as determined by your shutter speed).
5. Flash fires.
6. Curtain B closes the frame and ends the exposure.

To understand the significance, imagine you are taking a picture at night in which moving lights will be visible during the exposure. During the exposure, the lights move across your frame and you are not panning.

During the first (normal) exposure, the flash illuminates the subject on one side of your frame. The lights then form streaks across the frame right over top of the subject, resulting in a weird looking image.

In the second scenario, the shutter opens and the lights record their streaks. Then the flash illuminates the subject. The streaks from the lights lead up to the subject, giving the illusion of speed and creating a generally cool effect.

Depending on the speed and direction of movement and the intensity of the lights, it doesn’t always work this way but one of the great things about digital is that you can review your results and try something different if you didn’t get what you were expecting.

It bears noting that you can’t precisely control exactly when the flash fires when using second curtain synch. So it’s possible in our example scenario that the subject could be out of the frame before the flash goes off. Second curtain synch requires some practice, a bit of finesse and sometimes luck to use well.

This post is an excerpt from Jeffrey’s book Photography Basics.

PS: Check out these Amazing Examples of Slow Sync Flash

Tags: 2nd Curtain Sync, Flash, lighting, Slow Sync

Have you ever wondered how photographs get that background darkness that makes the person appear to be standing in front of some great abyss? Well, that effect isn’t as difficult as you might think and the trick seems counter intuitive.  

The key is to darken your picture with more light.

Let me explain with an example.

On Sunday, my nieces and nephews came over for our typical family dinner. Since they were already dressed up in their Sunday best they asked if I could take a few shots before we sat down to eat. If you knew these kids you’d know why shooting after eating wasn’t an option. So I had 5 min to figure out how to take decent pictures in a boring living room with bad lighting. As you progress in photography be prepared for these situations. Fortunately I had an idea.

First, I took a dark blanket off the couch and had someone hang it over the door. If you have ever tried shooting in front of a blanket you’d know that the results are often less than pleasing most of the time. Textures and wrinkles can be distracting. I didn’t want light coming from where I was standing so I removed the flash from my camera and handed it to a bystander and told them to aim it like a gun close to the subject.

Ok, now some mildly technical stuff.

Both Nikon and Canon have a wireless flash system that’s semi-standard on their cameras and flash units. I was shooting Nikon so their terminology is slightly different than others. First, I set my flash unit (SB-600) to “remote” mode and noted the channel (1) and group (A) displayed on the back of the flash.

Because remote flash units need to be triggered by another flash, I decided to just use the popup flash that was already on my camera. I went into my camera menu and changed my flash to Commander Mode. In that same menu, I set the camera flash to control any remote strobe set to Channel 1, and any flash in Group A to fire at normal power.

I was only using one remote flash for this shot but the camera can control many units with this same system. The last thing I did was to dial down my pop-up flash as low as it would go. I wanted to use it to communicate with the other strobes, but I didn’t want any of its light to actually make it into the picture. Whew… done.

As difficult as that sounded, it took roughly 30 seconds to do. So now I had a remote flash that could be placed anywhere in the room that was being controlled by the popup flash on my camera. No more boring, always lit from the front shots.

Ok, final technical point to this shot, and that is how to achieve the dramatic shadows with a pure black background.

As you know, for a subject to be properly exposed you manipulate the shutter speed and aperture size until you are letting in just the right amount of light for a proper picture. Well what would happen if you had a subject that was so bright that in order to keep them properly exposed you had to close the shutter before the surroundings had time to burn their way into the photo. (Re-read that last sentence if necessary.) Wala!

By making a subject intensely bright, or much brighter than the surroundings, it will properly expose long before the background, in my case a dark blue blanket, shows up. I put my camera in manual mode and stopped down my aperture to as small as it would allow (f/22) and set my shutter speed as fast as it would go while in commander mode (1/250).

Again, seems counter intuitive, but by having a bright flash so close to the subject, you end up darkening the rest of the photo. The entire photo-shoot took less than 10 min from setup to finish.

Lets recap.

Step 1: Get the flash off your camera to achieve those dramatic lighting and shadow effects.

Step 2: Set the flash to be remotely controlled.

Step 3: Set your camera pop-up flash to “Commander Mode”.

Step 4: Dial in your flash settings with your camera menu. I used normal power (1/1).

Step 5: Dial down your pop-up flash so you don’t get light coming from the pop-up in your photo.

Step 6: Put your camera in Manual mode with the smallest aperture and fastest shutter speed available to avoid over exposing your shots. Adjust from there.

Give it a try and post your results.

Tags: lighting, Portraits

I once saw a video, where a pro-photographer used professional studio lighting and mirrors to light a subject, and it inspired me to try and achieve the same result using only ‘amateur light’

After a visit to the DYI store and Toys R’Us, I had what I needed; 4 pieces of 15 x 15 cm (5,5 x 5,5 inches) mirrors and a model car. Call me a petrol-head, but I couldn’t help but worrying which car to buy based on what I’d most like to own full-scale… In the end I decided on a scale 1:24 Maserati GranTurismo

My ‘household light’ is an old 20 AUD IKEA floor lamp with a 60 watts tungsten bulb. I wanted to use only one light source, as household bulbs almost inevitably gives different color hues depending on manufacturer and age of the bulb.

My aim was to use the mirrors to reflect light onto the car, in order to make shape, form and curves more noticeable than if I had just flooded the whole car with light.

My first set-up was like this:

This lit the car from the side, at about 45 degrees above. The first shot using only the floor lamp and no mirrors produced this effect:

There’s a nice Z-shaped shadow across the hood, but otherwise it was clear that this set-up didn’t work. Take a look at the car - there aren’t any sign of curves or lines along the side of the car or around the wheel arches.

The light is too strong and too direct to show any tones in the reflected light. This creates an even surface lacking any depth perspective. A lot like the effect from direct sunlight at the middle of the day, actually.

More importantly, with the light coming from the same side of the car I had my camera positioned, I was unable to use the mirrors to reflect light onto the car. It had to be re-arranged!

My second set-up looks like this

Here I have the lamp directly behind the car, about 60 degrees above.

Here’s the beginning - car lit only with the lamp:

Not surprisingly, the car is underexposed on the side I’m photographing (which is what I want it to be at this stage). There a highlight (where door meets roof). I guess it could have been solved by using a more diffused light such as a white cloth in front of the lamp.

The first mirror I placed (marked 1 on the photo above) reflects light on the front of the car:

The aim is to light the front and more specifically, to get reflections in the headlight.

The next mirror (marked “2″) reflects light onto the side of the car:

and creates reflections in the wheels (particularly the front) and enhances the shape and form of the front wheel arch as well as the longitudinal crease on the door and down to the rear wheel arch.

The third mirror (yep, marked “3″)

is reflecting light onto the rear wheel and enhances the line from the roof onto the trunk.

The last mirror (no. “4″) is reflecting light onto the front and into the cabin.

Having used all four mirrors I was out of options, but I don’t think more mirrors would have made a difference anyway.

Here’s how the car looks without mirrored light and with mirrored light (click to enlarge):

With just a household lamp and four mirrors I have created a studio-like lighting of the model car!

Had my mission been to sell the model car on ebay or another internet auction site, I’m confident that the final result would have attracted more potential customers, and thus a higher selling price.

Even if I’m not selling the model car (I’ll sell it when I can replace it with one in scale 1:1), I have still had fun playing with light. Knowledge of light is the basics of photography, so it will undoubtedly benefit me at a later stage. And, who knows, I might even have inspired you to try something similar - playing and learning?

Tech-talk:
Photos are taken with a Nikon D300 and 50 f/1.8 lens. All photos are shot at f/14 and approx 1 second exposure at ISO 320. White balance was set to auto which created a yellow hue. I could have recorded a manual white balance, but as I shot in RAW I adjusted the white balance in Nikon Capture NX.

The photos are reduced in size, added some sharpness and converted to jpg. Otherwise no post processing.

Is there anything I would have differently?
I later noticed that the car looked cooler in the first set-up (seen more from the front). I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Also, next time I’ll consider a dark non-reflective surface and backdrop. That should give me more fine-tuning possibilities, as there will be much less reflected light from the tabletop. Furthermore it will allow the car to stand out more from the background.

Did I stop there?
Nah, I had to try to turn the mirrors around, like this:

A rather different way of using the mirrors, which creates this result:

This set-up is lit with a softbox, and note how form and curves are less distinct than when using the mirrors. It clearly shows the difference the mirrors can do when used for reflecting light.

I’d love comments and suggestions - or even challenges - regarding the next subject to light with household light and mirrors…

Tags: lighting, Mirrors

Lighting can be the difference between a good shot and a great one.

Walk into most professional photographer’s studios and you’ll be confronted with truckloads of lighting equipment. To the average hobby photographer it’s enough to make your mind boggle - and for your stomach to turn as you think about the cost of it all.

Most of us can’t afford a full lighting rig - however what if there was a way to experiment with the type of lighting gear that pro photographers use without spending too much money? What if you could make it yourself.

In this post I’ve found 10 DIY Flash and Lighting Hacks that put some of these lighting techniques within the grasp of the rest of us. Some are more involved than others but all are fun and will provide you with some new lighting gear to experiment with.

1. Multi-Super-SB-Ring Light

What can you make with six speedlight flashes, a coffee can and a little spare time?

You get a multi-super-sb-ring-light! (pictured left).

You could probably also blind a small village if you’re not careful!

Find out what it is, how to make one and what the results are like here.

This one looks like a lot of fun to play with - even if it’s just for the challenge of it and the looks you’d get when you pull it out next time you do a shoot..

2. Poor Mans Ring Flash

All you need for this one (pictured left) is a used milk bottle/jug and some scissors.

The result is that you’ll have a Poor Mans Ring Flash.

A ring flash is one that fits around the lens - it creates a wonderfully unique lighting effect. They will usually lighten your wallet by a couple of hundred dollars.

It’s so simple that I whipped one up for myself today in 5 minutes.

It worked out pretty good too - not bad for the cost of a couple of liters of milk!

If you want to experiment with other methods of making DIY ring flashes you also might want to check out this post for another method. This one is a little more involved, but I think will probably get better results.

Subscribe to our newsletter to get more weekly Digital Photography tips like this

3. Inexpensive Light Tent

Have you ever wanted to replicate the crisp clean product images that you see in catalogs with the products seemingly floating on a white background?

If you do - you need some kind of light tent/light box.

As usual, light boxes can cost you quite a bit - but thanks to DPS reader Jeffrey Bail you might be able to achieve the results without having to spend much at all.

In our Inexpensive Light Tent tutorial Jeffrey shows you how to turn a box, fabric, tape, glue board and light into a great little light tent.

4. Party Bouncer Card

Another cool DIY Hack is this Party Bouncer Card (pictured left) which is so simple yet promises to be so useful and effective.

This one is for those of you with a camera which doesn’t have the capability for an off camera flash.

It allows you to bounce some light off the ceiling while also diffusing the light going forward - this will enable you to get a less harsh flash effect that many flashes leave images with. I like this one as it pushes the light out from your flash in two directions which can lead to a more even light rather than just diffusing it - a little more sophisticated.

Another quick DIY on diffusing a flash is to put a little translucent magic tape over a flash (or a piece of white tissue paper can do it too).

Any of these methods will decrease the amount of light getting out from the flash onto your subject - hopefully resulting in a more subtle light and a less blown out image.

5. Turkey Pan Beauty Dish

Beauty dishes are wonderful pieces of photographic equipment to experiment with - but they can be very expensive.

Not any more (at lest if you use this DIY trick).

In this hack learn how to use a simple Turkey Pan to get some pretty amazing beauty dish results! The comparison examples in this tutorial between the turkey pan version and the real thing are pretty convincing.

I must remember to add Turkey Pans to this week’s shopping list.

Check out this tutorial here.

6. DIY Ghetto Flash Extender

I’d not heard of this type of device before - but since I found this tutorial I’ve discovered a number of photographers who for one reason or another want to be able to extend the reach of their flash.

This is particularly useful for wildlife photographers who want to supplement natural light in tricky lighting with fill flash. Of course sometimes it’s difficult to get close to that animal and a normal flash would have no impact.

Enter the Flash Extender (one popular one is the ‘better beamer’).

Want to make one for yourself? This tutorial for the DIY Ghetto Flash Extender will tell you how.

7. Disposable Camera Flash Slave

Lately I’ve had more and more questions from readers about how to set up shots with multiple flash units to light a subject from more than one angle.

It’s not difficult to do if you have the budget to buy yourself an extra speedlight flash or two (or more) but if you don’t have the budget is there a way?

In this tutorial and author shows you how to use a disposable camera to act as a remote slave flash.

OK - this tutorial isn’t for anyone looking for a quick simple solution - but it is a challenge that I’m sure some of you will be up for!

8. Flash Mounted DIY Softbox

Another way that professional photographers diffuse the light that comes from a flash and gets a nice subtle and even light on their subject is to use a softbox

A softbox sits over a light (it’s a big box with white walls) which ensures the light is spread out evenly.

This DIY Softbox tutorial is great - it requires card, a white sheet (silk if you can), velcro, scissors, glue and the template that the tutorial provides you with.

The results look pretty good - but if you want more DIY softboxes the same site also has another tutorial for an alternative softbox.

Again - this one looks pretty good.

9. Flash Bouncers

There are a lot of DIY flash diffuser hacks and tutorials around but this one from our friend Chris at DSLRBlog is pretty cool.

It costs £1, takes 5 minutes, requires craft foam, a little elastic and some scissors.

The tutorial even includes a template for you to print out on your printer and then cut out - what more do you need?

Even the technologically challenge could make this one (speaking of myself of course).

Nice work from Chris with that one.

Another similar Flash Bouncer/Diffuser can be found over at DPReview here. This one is foam also.

Lastly - another card/paper version of the flash bouncer.

10. Full Budget DIY Lighting Studio

It’s time for one last DIY lighting hack - this one attempts to bring it all together with a full DIY Budget Studio setup.

The author of it takes up the challenge of creating a full studio lighting system for under $75.

It includes lights, reflectors, diffusers and flash diffusers - all using items that you could pick up at hardware and craft stores.

It also shows you a few test shots at the end of the tutorial that compare different lighting options.

You will need your own flash unit to use the flash diffusers on - but the rest is all included in the tutorial.

I particularly light the suggestions around globes for the lights. I know a couple of DPS forum members have had similar success with these sorts of lights.

11. UPDATE: The Fring - a DIY Flash Ring

I saw this one recently and I think it makes a worthy addition to this post.

It is a DIY Fibre-Optic flash extension for your DSLR’s popup flash!

It uses the light from your camera’s flash to light your subject using fibre optics arranged around your lens to give a more even light.

Of course it’s not the easiest to make (there are 37 steps) but it’s an ingenious idea and the example images taken with the setup are pretty cool considering it cost just a few dollars to make.

Subscribe to our newsletter to get more weekly tips like this

Tags: DIY, Flash, Hacks, lighting