Working with Off Camera Flash and TTL

 To be able to create a portrait of someone is a wonderful experience. To do so in an interesting location is even better. To be able to make use of lighting techniques that allow your imaginative ideas to come to life and bring out the personality of the subject and the location environment… is where it really gets exciting!

Step one – analyze the natural light first

The natural, or ambient light, even though it may seem to be everywhere all at once, actually has the same qualities of direction, intensity, colour and softness that are so easily seen in studio conditions. Taking a moment to observe and think about these ambient light qualities is the first step in determining how you can best make use of additional lighting from off camera flash. You might find it helpful to think of your location portrait setting as a clock or compass with your subject in the middle, and the camera and light sources arranged around the subject in a circular manner, through a 360 degree arc. The first example below shows a natural light style portrait, with differing qualities of light on the subject and the background. The ambient light direction comes from slightly behind the subject, through the trees, without being too distinct, but enough to provide interest to the background.

Adding more light – main light placement moulds the portrait

The diagram below shows the lighting setup with the added a reflector and flash to our scene, in a circular arrangement with the subject in the centre. Light sources have been placed at 45 degree positions, relative to the subject and camera.

Strong lighting positions

On camera flash, is generally known to be harsh and often not that interesting, similarly, light sources from directly from behind and the side are equally strong and not used that often for traditional portraits. These positions of 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees are shown in the diagram below. These are not “bad” light setups, you can consider them “strong style” positions that are not as flexible to make use of, so they are used less often than more “desirable” lighting setups.

Adjusting lighting positions

Between these hard angle positions is where you want to position your primary or “Main” light sources. Doing so allows you to shape our subject with light in a natural manner and provides a more flexible set so that your subject can easily adjust their pose without “missing” the light. This is more comfortable setup for the photographer and will almost always provide more pleasing results of the subject. Photographs become more interesting as there is now more definition provided by the presence of highlights and shadows, which are also easier to control when working with this setup.

Adding secondary lights or reflectors

Once you have identified your ambient light conditions, and placed your main light source, you can now determine where to best place your accent lighting with additional flashes or reflectors. These lights provide enhanced interest to the image, by bringing out the subtleties of texture, colour and form. Placing them too close to your primary light will cause them to wash out each other, so remember the desirable angles created by our light compass earlier. When you think of the compass, you’ll want to have your additional light sources at least 90 degrees away from each other. This allows them to be effective on their own, without overlapping the other lights and losing their intended effect.

Accent lights are always positioned relative to the main light and tend to provide the feeling of a skimmed light back to the camera. This is the most effective way to enhance the creative style within an image, and is surprisingly easy to do now that you understand how the lights work with each other, and how you can arrange them to work best with your subject and where you position your camera.

TIP 1: To gain even more flexibility with outdoor flash, make use of the High Speed Sync feature,which will allow you to use shutter speeds that go beyond the traditional limits of 1/125th or 1/250th. Look to your camera manual for setting that up, so you can use speeds up to 1/8000th , it really works!. It may seem intimidating, but controlling the off camera flashes can actually be very easy, surprisingly intuitive, and very effective. Nikon have their way of remotely controlling the settings of their flashes, with their Creative Lighting System (CLS) using highly accurate Through The Lens (TTL) metering. You can use a separate flash on camera as the “Master” to control the Remotes, or even use the camera’s built-in pop up flash in “Commander Mode”. You can adjust the flash output, so the light portion doesn’t affect your image, or use it as additional fill. Nikon has a separate controller as well, called the SU-800. At half the price, it’s like a flash, but without the actual flash head. Canon has their equivalent versions available, and other manufactures also enable TTL options. These controls take the fear and pain out of the remote flash experience. Controlling the remote flashes can be as simple as deciding you want more or less light output, then bumping the dial up or down from the camera location.

Tip 2: Setting your camera to under-expose the natural light by one or two steps, allows your flashes to take over the look of the image and dominate the lighting conditions. You can set your camera Manually or use Aperture Priority, either way the camera will “talk to the flash” to calculate the correct flash exposures as they appear in camera, on the sensor. With the internal technology that works so well, the simple camera and flash setups do the work, so you don’t have to. Yes, it can be that simple!

More example images and diagrams

Article by 

Craig Minielly as part of the editorial & commercial photography scene, has been published globally for the past 30+ years, and is the creator of the Craig’s Actions production tools. He is a Canadian Ambassador for Nikon, and the recipient of the Yousuf Karsh Lifetime Achievement Award. Visit his studio site at Aura Photographics.

Samyang says five of its full frame lenses now available in Sony E mount

Samyang has announced that, as promised in October, five of its full frame lenses are now available in Sony E-mount, and are therefore the first third-party optics with native mounts for the Sony A7 and A7R. The lenses are the 14mm F2.8, 24mm F1.4, 24mm F3.5 tilt-and-shift,35mm F1.4, and 85mm F1.4. All feature manual focus and aperture operation, and will likely appear under Rokinon, Bower and Pro Optic branding in due course.

The E-mount models are essentially the same as the company's generally well-respected SLR lenses, but with a ca. 26mm long empty tube added at the back to compensate for the difference in flange distance from the lens mount to the sensor. (The E-mount has a flange distance of 18mm, compared to ~44-46mm for SLR systems.) This means that the E-mount lenses are considerably more bulky than their SLR counterparts, and heavier too. If you use both an SLR system and E-mount cameras, it almost certainly makes more sense to buy the lenses in the appropriate mount for your SLR (or SLT), and use a high quality E-mount adapter.  

If, however, you're only going to be using the lenses on an E-mount camera, then in principle the native E-mount lenses should give better alignment between the optical units and the sensors - even the very best adapters won't hold lenses absolutely perfectly straight. And if any camera's going to show up small misalignments, it's the A7R. In this case it would make sense to buy the E-mount versions (at least if you're confident you won't want to use the lenses on another camera system in the future).  

From Samyang's website:

Samyang Full-Frame Lenses with Sony E mount

Following the announcement issued on October, Samyang released five full-frame lenses fitted with the bayonet Sony E-mount, including:

• Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC
• Samyang 24mm f/1.4 ED AS IF UMC
• Samyang T-S 24mm f/3.5 ED AS UMC
• Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC
• Samyang 85mm f/1.4 AS IF UMC

Wider selection of lenses currently available with this mount will enable users of Sony Alpha and Sony NEX cameras to take advantage of the best quality optics without any additional adapters. The lenses have been prepared for 35mm format, which makes them a perfect tool not only for Sony Alpha 7 and 7R cameras fitted with full-frame sensor but also for models with APS-C sensor, including Sony NEX-7.

The two yellow lines .... Do not overtake me . On the way to Norway 

Some times it's good to look back when you are  climbing high to see how far you have come. This photo was taken during one of my road trip to Norway. Camera - Nikon D90 , Lens Nikon 50mm 1.8D

6 flash modifiers every photographer should try once

Using flashguns can be daunting enough that many photographers might be put off from experimenting further with lighting. But there are a number flash modifiers that are quite simple to use and can produce a wide range of creative effects. Below we’ve rounded up six of the best flash modifiers you can use to soften your flash, add a dash of colour and other tricks.

Best flash modifiers: 01 Wide-angle diffuser

Most flashguns come with a flip-out wide-angle diffuser – a plastic panel moulded with prism shapes that sits immediately in front of the flash head. The prisms spread the flash to lighten up a wider area for shooting at wide-angle focal lengths.

Best flash modifiers: 02 Bounce-and-swivel head

Many flashguns have a bounce-and-swivel head, enabling you to reflect the flash from nearby walls and ceilings for a wider spread – and thus more diffused light. Light-coloured surfaces are best – ideally white – as otherwise the light will be tinged with a colour cast from the reflected surface.

Best flash modifiers: 03 Catchlight panel

Many high-end flashguns have a catchlight panel to provide an attractive catchlight in your subject’s eyes to bring portraits to life.

You can use this when bouncing flash as the pull-out panel aims a small proportion of light forwards; and also when using your flashgun to light your subjects face-on.

Best flash modifiers: 04 Diffusers

All manner of flash diffusers are available, and while the designs differ wildly – from the Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce and Gary Fong Lightsphere to the Lastolite Ezy-Box – they essentially place a semi-opaque layer in front of the flash, effectively enlarging its area and so softening and diffusing it.

Best flash modifiers: 05 Gels

Shooting indoors can cause white balance issues as the colour of the flash competes with tungsten lighting, for instance. A gel in front of the flash head can alter its output to match the ambient light – or can be used creatively to give a deliberately colourful burst of flash similar to stage lighting.

Best flash modifiers: 06 Ring flash adaptor

Ring flash is a specialised type of flash that surrounds the lens so that the subject is lit from all around, thus eliminating shadows. It’s often used in medical or forensic photography, but works great for portraits, giving a shadowless look and attractive doughnut-shaped catchlights in the eyes.

The best way to use a ball head tripod mount

If you’ve considered buying a ball head mount to replace your three-way lead, you may be wondering how best to use them. In this tutorial we explain the best way to use a ball head tripod mount to ensure the sharpest pictures possible.

Three-way heads are good when you need to make precise adjustments, but ball heads are much faster when you want to make adjustments in a hurry.

When buying a ball head tripod mount, it’s a good idea to measure the diameter of the circular platform at the top of your tripod’s centre column, and to get a head that has a similarly sized base (typically either about 40mm or 60mm). This ensures the most solid connection possible.

The thread of the mounting stud may also be either 1/4-inch or 3/8-inch. Step-up thread adaptors are cheap and widely available, but you can’t fit a head with a smaller 1/4-inch head to a platform that has a larger 3/8-inch thread.

How to use a ball head tripod mount

1 Lock it down
Many tripods feature locking screws in the platform of the centre column. Use these to lock the head, rather than over-tightening the head on the platform’s main attachment stud.

2 Friction damper
An adjustable friction damper is useful when using heavy camera and lens combinations. It reduces the risk of the camera falling forward when the locking clamp is loosened.

3 Straight and level
Some tripods and heads have spirit levels, which help you to ensure that the camera isn’t tilted when shooting. Another option is to use the camera’s own virtual horizon, if featured.

4 Portrait orientation
For portrait-orientation shooting, swivel the camera to the right (when viewed from the rear). This stops the camera loosening on its tripod attachment thread.

Moon Photography: 6 Tips for Better Moon Photos

The moon is something so familiar to us, and yet so strange that it’s mesmerizing. It’s at once commonplace and extraordinary. As photographers, we are drawn to it in an attempt to convey the intrigue we feel when we look at it.

But moon photography can be tricky.

A bright full moon creates one of the most high contrast situations there is, posing a difficult challenge for photographers. Often photos of the moon appear like a spotlight in the sky that looks more like the sun than the moon.

Moon Photography Tips

To get the best possible pictures of our one-and-only moon, it’s important to know a few things about it first.

1. Learn the Phases of the Moon

The moon itself emits no light, it’s simply a huge rock being lit up by the sun. As it orbits the earth, and as the earth orbits the sun, how much we see of that reflection changes from a bright, full moon to no apparent moon at all.

By Tomruen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Because of our counter-clockwise trajectory around the sun, the shadow it casts on the moon is always moving to the left; after a new moon (no moon), the illuminated side starts to creep in from the right edge, expanding towards the left side each night. As the moon’s apparent size gets bigger, we call it “waxing”.

Once the moon is full, the shadow starts to reappear – again on the right side – and grow leftwards, shrinking the visible moon until it is dark again. This is called “waning”. Therefore, any time you want to know what the moon will look like tomorrow, look at it tonight; if it is lit on its right side, it is waxing towards fullness. But if it’s lit on the left, it is waning, and will soon be gone.

The twilight sky also holds clues to the lunar phases. If the moon is visible before sundown, it is waxing, but if you can see it before sunup, it’s waning. Alternatively, you can always look up a calendar online, or download a moon phase app that will do the calculations for you.

2. Use the Right Equipment

To maximize the success of your moon photography, there are a few bits of a gear that will come in handy.

• A zoom lens.
  If you’ve ever taken a shot of the moon and been disappointed by the tiny white blob that results, you’re probably using too short of a focal length. A standard wide-angle lens makes everything appear smaller, particularly things that are far in the distance. To get a close-up shot, use a focal length of at least 200mm or more. Longer lenses will result in greater magnification and detail.
• A tripod.
  To support the weight of this large lens, and to allow the slow shutter speeds that may be necessary to get a good exposure, mount your camera securely on a sturdy tripod.
• A shutter release.
  These come in both wireless and wired options and will allow you to fire the shutter without having to depress the shutter button and risk camera shake. If you don’t have one, use your camera’s self-timer to achieve the same benefit.

3. Get a Good Exposure

The moon is very intricate and detailed, with craters, channels, and mountains dotting its surface. If the moon in your photo turns out bright white, it is overexposed. This happens frequently because the blackness of the surrounding sky throws the light meter off.

To fix this, turn down your exposure compensation (+/-), or use your camera’s spot metering mode to expose for the moon alone. Check your camera’s manual for information about how to do this on your specific model.

For best moon photography results, bracket your shots. Some cameras will have an automatic bracketing feature, but if yours doesn’t, you can simply do it manually. First, take one shot at the automatically-determined settings. Then, using exposure compensation, take the same shot at -0.5EV, and one at +0.5EV. Do the same at -1EV and +1EV, and continue to +/-1.5EV and beyond if necessary. Later, you can choose the best exposure when you view them on your computer.

4. Find the Best Times and Places to Shoot

Unless the city is a part of your scene, you probably don’t want a lot of urban light pollution spilling into the sky when you’re trying to photograph a pristine moonlit night. You’ll get the cleanest shots outside of dense civilization. Explore backcountry roads, or take a hike into the nearby mountains to find truly dark night skies.

That said, a common problem photographers run into with moon photography is the harsh difference between a brilliantly lit moon and a pitch-dark sky. To avoid this, consider shooting during the “blue hours”, when the sky glows faintly after the sun goes down, or before it comes up. There is less contrast at this time, though the moon is still bright.

A moon phase app can help you determine when there will be a full moon during twilight.

5. Create an Interesting Composition

As compelling as a beautifully sharp, detailed image of a lonesome moon is, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Getting that perfect close-up is excellent practice, but try to get creative by placing the moon within a more complex composition.

For instance, you could try framing it behind trees and buildings, or reflecting it off the surface of a still lake. Placing other objects in the foreground gives the moon context and scale that it lacks on its own. Think of the moon as a single element which should be incorporated along with other compositional elements and techniques to make a great final photograph.

6. Combine Multiple Exposures

Incorporating other objects can complicate things though, and you may find that the perfect exposure for the moon doesn’t match that of the rest of the scene. Sometimes natural light doesn’t cooperate, and the camera doesn’t see things the way our eyes do. This is where digital photography comes in really handy, allowing you to play with your images to create the scene the way you saw it, even if the camera saw it a little differently.

To do this, take several shots at different exposures by bracketing, as mentioned above. When you open the files on your computer, choose two: the one with the best exposure on the moon (‘Image 1′), and the one with the best exposure on the rest of the scene (‘Image 2′). Using an image editing program, select the moon from Image 1 and copy it, then paste it into Image 2, covering the moon in that picture. Use the eraser tool with a heavily feathered edge to remove any imperfections and blend the edges together. This method may take some trial and error to get it just right, so try it several times with several different shots to get the hang of it.

When performing this technique, try not to stretch or enlarge the size of the moon. The goal of image editing is to faithfully recreate a scene that the camera simply can’t capture all at once, so beware of any visual exaggerations that make the composition look unnatural or inauthentic.

Share Your Moon Photography Tips and Moon Photos

Got any more moon photography tips to add? We’d love to see them in comments below. Also feel free to share any photos you’ve taken of the moon.

A Post By: Anne McKinnell