400-40-4 reminder

You remember the student I shot yesterday with split lighting? Well, here he is again, in the same classroom, a few minutes earlier, with the exact same conditions:

Compare the two.

Yesterday’s photo was made with the camera in “studio settings”, which makes indoors ambient go away. This one was shot using the well-known “400-40-4” settings of 400 ISO, 1/40 sec, f/4. The “indoors flash starting point“, if you will.

That makes ordinary indoors light a little brighter than it is (the room was fairly dark), but still about two stops below ordinary lighting; the subject is lit with my flash bounced behind me.

These two settings should be ingrained in your flash brain as good starting points for very different requirements. Study the two and associate each one with a setting.

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3 thoughts on “400-40-4 reminder

  1. I attended this workshop – very well done Michael. Very good flash seminar for intermediate or new or even experienced flash shooters. Very entertaining, and well structured process delivered in the course.

  2. getting these ideas “ingrained into the flash brain” is the key point here. well taken.

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