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