Like these, shot at the agricultural show the other day.
Open your lens wide. f/2.8 here. Then get close to the glass. That way you do not see the imperfections and dirt. No flash1 Instead, use ISO 800, to use the available warm light. That gave me 1/25ooth second to freeze the motion.
Aren’t they impossibly cute?
Steel-blue and yellow are opposite colours, so like many juxtapositions, this one works particularly well too. And when old and new, nature and man-made are mixed in, there might just be a picture there.
One lesson in this: always keep your camera on or near you. Another lesson: always keep your eyes open.
Reader Len recently asked:
A while back you said “one major reason I bought a 7D: I can now, just like the Nikon users, drive my external flashes from the popup.” But your studio setup includes strobes (non Canon) plus two pocketwizards which are not cheap. Is this still your recommendation? Or would you now revise this to include Canon flashes driven by the popup flash and do away with the pocketwizards and strobes?
Good question. Yes, it is still my recommendation, but only to be flexible.
I have the speedlites (580exII, 3x 430EX) for reasons of portability, independence of power outlets, light weight, and TTL system flexibility. A speedlite (small flash) system like that is the first system I would recommend to anyone, and with the great range of Honl modifiers (snoots, grids, reflectors, gels etc) this gives me an incredible portable system. And it may be all you ever need. You can do studio work with this, for sure. And I often do.
But I still have my studio lights as well. Those are less essential: I could do it all with the small flashes. But the studio lights do give me benefits for typical studio use, such as:
Len adds:
BTW, FlashZebra sells cheap (but good quality) 30ft extender cords that allow you to place your flash some distance from the camera and yet retain full ETTL functionality. That works perfectly for me, with a 50D, 580EX and 430EX flash. What’s the advantage of using strobes and pocketwizards? Is it just more power and no cables? Or am I missing something fundamental?
Yes, Pocketwizards free me from having to use cables. So it’s just that preference – indeed cables are a possibility, but whether in a studio or outdoors, I prefer to have fewer cables rather than more for people to trip over.
So all that said, I almost always use speedlites and TTL outdoors and on location, and my studio strobes and manual in a studio.
When I shot the Tribe party recently, I was not the only photographer using a Gary Fong Lightsphere:
In general, where there’s no obvious bounce surfaces, the Fong Lightsphere is what I will turn to. No panacea, but a good tool to have in your bag. The Lightsphere throws light in all directions, and there is a good chance that something will bounce back light.
And of course open your lens all the way f/1.4 is better than f/2.8 when the light is low. And 2.8 is better than 4. And 4 is better than 5.6… you get the picture.
I noticed the matching colour, here in the picture below.
It is always a good idea to look at colour while you are shooting. And you can learn to notice. Start like this: If anything strikes you: shoot!
Harmonious colours, is how we describe colours that are close together (as opposed to contrasting colours, which are opposite, like red-green, or blue-yellow). The above shows harmonious colours. These strikes us as gentle, soft, understated, even.
Taken at “Tribe” on 24 October 2009.
We ought to all shoot in Black and White sometimes, I keep saying.Reducing all colours it shades of gray can make even mundane subjects interesting. It works well with brick:
Whew, what difficult light.
And what a pleasure when you get it right in near-impossible conditions..
A reminder to all flash photographers: you need your shutter speed to be below the camera’s flash synch speed.
What does this mean? Let me explain.
The flash fires for the briefest period, of course. Like 1/2000th of a second. That is why we call it a flash.
So when it fires, if the light is to reach the entire film or sensor, the shutter needs to be totally open at that point.
That much is obvious. But what is not obvious is that there is an engineering limitation in your shutter. Beyond a certain shutter speed, the camera’s synch speed, the shutter never totally opens. Instead, a small (increasingly narrow) slit travels across the shutter to give each pixel a brief exposure time.That’s cool – the shutter does not have to be super-fast and expensive and you get a fast shutter speed.
But this gets in the way when you are using flash. When you fire during those short exposure times (on most modern cameras, faster than about 1/200th second), the light does not reach the entire sensor. Look at this example I shot to illustrate this, at speeds from 1/200th to 1/1000th sec:
You can see that as I exceed the sync speed, the light only reaches part of the shutter.
You should also note that especially when using external flashes with Pocketwizards or similar, flash takes time to set up. My 1Ds MKIII has a synch speed f 1/25oth second but as you see, at that speed it is already beginning to cut off. Best stay a bit below your synch speed (I typically set my shutter, when I am using studio flash, to 1/125th second).
(There is a way to overcome that: fast flash, which some high end flash units offer. This continuously, all the time that the shutter travels, pulses the flash at a very rapid rate, so that the slit, as it travels across the sensor, has light coming in throughout its travel time. It works great – do use it when taking flash images outside – but it uses a lot of energy, and hence decreases the range of your flash.)
(Advanced tip: I know of at least one photographer who uses this effect to introduce an electronic version of a neutral density filter or a barn door: he sets his camera to 1/320th second while using flash, and turns the camera upside down. That makes the top part of the image dark, at least as far as the flash part of the light is concerned!)
A studio need not be expensive. Even a light or two – affordable strobes – and a few reflectors and a backdrop will do it.
This is a setup I often take on the road:
Easier than it seems and this results in good pictures. Even, sometimes, when you use just one light and a reflector.
And instead of the light meter, consider using the histogram.
How do I take one of these with my new 7D?
I set the camera on a tripod and use pocketwizards to fire one flash into an umbrella. One flash gives me that severe look, but to slightly lessen that, I have a reflector on the other side (camera left). I used a 35mm f/1.4L lens on the 7D, meaning an effective lens length of about 50mm. The “Nifty fifty”!
I set my camera to 100 ISO – best quality, and background light does not upset the shot. And I am in manual mode, at f/8 (enough DOF) and 1/125th second. I use autofocus where the camera selects a focus point, This time. I will – because as the subject I cannot see what I am doing.
Finally, I use the timer of course. So I can press the shutter while I hold my hand out; then sit down as the camera beeps.
And then I check: sharp enough? Nice graduated tones from dark to light? Catchlights in the eyes? Check!