Oh, and you thought my last post was a link-o-rama.....
The purpose of this post is threefold.
First, I would like to introduce you to my lighting assistant / model. I do have other breathing lighting assistant / models, but they are related to me. (Do stop sniggering; I may act like a pig but am not related to one!) And so I don't post their photos here. But seriously, I use this pig statue as a stand-in when setting up shots, and also for those late nights where I'm playing around with lighting concepts. When my kid was smaller, the pig was almost a perfect stand-in. But my baby is growing up quickly, so I now need a larger pig.
Second, I wanted to play around with the on-axis fill that David Hobby has been discussing lately. My key light is the obvious light you notice, camera left, bare flash. My fill is a second flash, bounced off of a white Ultimate Frisbee, held on-axis with the camera. (photo here) Meaning if I had a laser beam pointing out the lens, and extending behind the camera as well, I would position this light as close as possible to this laser beam(s), and would point directly at the subject. See, the same thing that makes on-camera flash boring is that it is flat, but if you are using just a teeny bit to bring back detail in your main light setup, it's quite nice. You can click the following links to see the contribution of the key light and the fill, by themselves.
Oh, and thirdly, I needed my daily photo today.
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Don’t Wait for Inspiration
1 week ago
I've learned that my Elinchrom trigger trasmitter can be mounted backwards such that my on-camera flash can still pop up and act as a fill flash, while the trasmitter can still send signal to the off camera flash.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good use of the "white wall" distance effect to get that eye catching background. Love the frisbee idea too!
Granted, the on-camera flash needs something to diffuse it because it's still pretty hard to tame its harshness, even though it doesn't have a lot of power.
ReplyDeleteYeah, last night I wondered about using my on-camera flash. But I believe the only adjustment is the exposure compensation +/- some number of EV. I don't have direct access to manual power levels.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure harshness is the issue with on-camera flash -- I think it's the "flat" look of on-axis fill. But when supplementing a manual source, I think it would be fine.
I was thinking of fooling with that last night, but honestly it was easier to use what I know, which is the 285.