Technique discussion...

AnCatDubh

It might be useful occasionally for a scenario to be posted on the forum and for people to contribute as to how they would approach it. Learning for everyone whether passive or active on the discussion. Sure, let's throw it out there and see does it grow legs.

Probably one of the more difficult scenarios to capture is the indoor portrait -particularly when dimly lit. It might be useful for people to chat through what technique they'd use.

Scenario - You want to take someone's portrait. Indoor. Night time. Room has high ceiling of cathedral proportions. Standard lighting in room (yeah, reasonably dim). No walls near enough or suitable to bounce the flash off and subject aint for moving to other location. But, you still want a shot.

Equipment in your hand (sure, your better camera was left in the car) - DSLR + Hot shoe flash. Assume not particularly fast lens. Ok, assume kit like lens f3.5 max aperture. Your brain. Tripod? Nope, it's in the car with your better camera.

Problem - how to get that killer shot you want.

Discuss.

ThOnda

Force the subject into the corner of the room, belly on the floor, cuff (or tie) hands behind the back, turn the head to the side, pour some colourful liquids on the hair to make it look messy, open my fly to get some expression (most likely laughter), set camera on auto and press the shutter.
Simples

Thecageyone

Any other furniture in the room? If not, I'll use my jacket/top on the floor to angle and hold the camera, tell the subject to take a breath, hold it, and stay still and try some 1"+ exposures. Oh, get them sitting on the floor across from the jacket with cam on of course.

[edit] missed the hot shoe flash bit, well, I'll use a tee shirt or something over it as a diffuser and fire away in that case, Probably try both to make sure.

magicbastarder

paint the subject white to allow for the subdued light.

swingking

take a photo upside down and bounce the light off the ground. Rotate in post-production

JayEnnis

I'll be wearing a white t-shirt so I'll bounce the flash off that and use it as a reflector to soften. 1" exposure held with one hand, fire the flash manually and it should freeze the subject

Promac

Spot meter and set fire to things.

JayEnnis

JayEnnis wrote: »

I'll be wearing a white t-shirt so I'll bounce the flash off that and use it as a reflector to soften. 1" exposure held with one hand and the fire the flash by hand and it should freeze the subject

Unless you have a complex system and a series of t-shirts, how do you bounce hot-shoe flash, though?


I think I'd have to resort to settling for "stay as still as you can", going with 1 second exposures and using rear sync flash at a low power, burst shooting as many shots as I can in a row.

JayEnnis

Deleted User wrote: »

Unless you have a complex system and a series of t-shirts, how do you bounce hot-shoe flash, though?


I think I'd have to resort to settling for "stay as still as you can", going with 1 second exposures and using rear sync flash at a low power, burst shooting as many shots as I can in a row.

Do you mean pop up? A hotshoe flash can be removed quite easily, you never said it had to be on camera. So I'll take it off the shoe, and bounce it by hand into my t-shirt. By pressing the test button while a 1 second exposure is in progress. Get it now?

Promac

JayEnnis wrote: »

Do you mean pop up? A hotshoe flash can be removed quite easily, you never said it had to be on camera. So I'll take it off the shoe, and bounce it by hand into my t-shirt. By pressing the test button while a 1 second exposure is in progress. Get it now?

That would never have occurred to me but it's so obvious now. That would allow you to fill the background with a long exposure but have a nicely exposed subject in the foreground - without any need for any TTL or wireless malarkey.

JayEnnis

JayEnnis wrote: »

Do you mean pop up? A hotshoe flash can be removed quite easily, you never said it had to be on camera. So I'll take it off the shoe, and bounce it by hand into my t-shirt. By pressing the test button while a 1 second exposure is in progress. Get it now?

I assumed that when ACD wrote "hot shoe flash" he meant pop up, and not a flash gun.


With a flash gun, the photo wouldn't really be that difficult. you could throw it to one side and fire it as a slave.

FoxT

ISO 400 + RAW + 0.5 sec + 2nd curtain sync. This will let in some reasonable amount of ambient so you are getting about 75% or less of the req'd light from the flash. Also your white balance will be poor so use RAW to correct that ( and possible underexposure) later.

Your AF might not work in v dim light. Focus on something about 3m away, lock the focus, then make sure to take your shot from 3m away. Crop afterwards as required. This is soo much easier to do if you have backbutton AF.

Find as well lit a spot as possible, with no mirrors/windows/reflective surfaces in the background. (though a fire, for example might be nice for a bit of atmosphere) - preferably about 1-2 metres from a wall. Bounce flash off wall.


Or - get a sheet of A4 paper (or white t-shirt) , dial in +2 ( or +3 if you can get it) of flash exp comp, and hold the sheet of paper in front of the flash. A4 paper is a great diffuser, but you do lose a lot of light with it.

Get their body at an angle to you & have them turn their head toward you.


For extra marks - get the flash off the camera, shoot with one hand, fire the flash with the other, and uhhh, hold the diffuser with your third hand.

-FoxT

pullandbang

5D MKII - ISO 25600, problem solved.....

Promac

Sheet of A4 in the mouth dangling over the flash at chest height is always a winner!

challengemaster

Walk out to the car and get your gear - all ye lazy feckers! :pac:

Thecageyone

Lightroom the bejaysis out of it.

PopeBuckfastXVI

1"+ exposure with shaky cam to get nice fluid background, exposed correctly (which is to say, a little under), hold flash high above head with subject looking up at flash, manually trigger flash near end of exposure to freeze subjects face within the movement of the rest of the frame.

BAM!