What’s Your Preference?

MarkyLandon · #1 (**permalink**) 08-12-2010, 09:43 AM

All of the techniques I attempt to describe below can be seen in much more detail on the "strobist" blog which is everything you'd ever need to know about off camera flash.

I Love My Little Brother. by Mark1970Vintage, on Flickr

To have control of both the ambient light and the flash you need t be shooting in manual. The trick is balancing the ambient and flash light via a combination of shutter speed, aperture settings and flash power (again the flash needs to be in manual.

First set the shutter speed to below the flash synch speed (in my case under 1/250 sec) but it varies by camera. Then adjust the aperture until you have the correct exposure for the background (for sunsets it's best to underexpose by a bit to get a more dramatic/moody effect)

Your flash should already be set up off camera (you'll need some sort of wireless trigger or a PC cord to fire it) Becasue the flash is off camera you can position it to the side, high or low to give a dramatic effect, causing shadows to highlight features rather than a "flat" look from straight ahaead on camera flash. Set your flash to manual and fire off a couple of test shots, adjusting the power acordingly to expose for the foreground subject. At this stage you are not adjusting the aperture/shutter speed settings at all you are finessing the foreground by ramping up or down the flash power.

It's difficult theory to get to grips with but the results can be stunning.

I used an aperture of f/22 to get my shutter speed below 1/250 due to the stregth of the sun. This resulted in me having to use my flash at full power and very close to the subject. I used a canon 580EXII flash triggered by Cactus V4's (from ebay) Camera was Canon EOS 40D with a 17-55 f/2.8 lens. Models my own kids... who for a change were cooperating !!