Understanding light

Later on during my first night with the new gear, I set about trying to get a feel for the effects that various parameters would have on lighting a subject. I set up a white sheet on my couch, put my xbox controller on it, and started messing around. I started with the flash on-camera in E-TTL mode straight on, then bounced, then manual mode, the off-camera, and then off-camera with an umbrella. Finally I added a 2nd flash to the mix. The results were interesting.

This was the first shot with the flash on-camera, E-TTL. I corrected (not very well) a white balance issue towards the bottom of the picture that came from the ambient light. I had too slow of a shutter speed at this point. Getting some glare, lighting is pretty flat and uninteresting, and there's really no detail in the background.



This one was bounced off the ceiling. Overall, it's not really all that bad. There's some shadow on the left side of the frame where the sheet goes up the back of the couch. You get some nice shadows that are beginning to give some definition and visual interest to the controller. There's a slight warm color cast from the ambient incandescent lights due to my shutter speed being 1/80 sec.


For this next pic, I had direct flash camera right at 1/128 power. I've learned that I need to master this hard light look. I don't really know how to control it so that it looks good in my photos. I kind of like the look that it gives here--very dramatic lighting. When I try it on people though, it looks bad and artificial. Oh well. Gotta practice some more, right? The color cast is gone as I upped my shutter speed. However, I neglected to remember that with the poverty wizards, I can only sync to 1/200 sec. I had my camera set to its max sync speed of 1/250 sec, thus causing the shadow at the bottom of the image.



Here I put an umbrella on the flash and turned it up to 1/32. You can see how it really softened the shadows, and got rid of the one on the back of the couch. I was really liking this shot and knew I was close. I just wanted to add a little bit of fill, as the top of the controller near the xbox button was a little dark, and I wanted to eliminate/reduce the shadow cast by the controller on the sheet.


And so, I added a second flash for fill. I turned the main flash up to 1/4 power to compensate for closing down my aperture from f/2.8 to f/8. The fill was a 430EX set to 1/16 power hand held and bounced off the ceiling. Here's the final shot:


Overall, there are subtle improvements and differences between this shot and the one that was just bounced with the on-camera flash. The top of the controller in the former was a little too evenly lit. In the latter there's a nice shadow cast by the keyboard attachment. Subtle differences, but in the end, that's what can make a good picture into a great one.