How to: flash and burn

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by jsanders

Great article. Which colour filters did you use in 2 and 3?

Second one didn't have a gel, since ambient was daylight and I wanted it to match. The third one was tungsten against daylight.

[Chip]

Lori - Here's a link to an article on the same topic. I like this site a lot (thanks to inkista for telling me about it). This linked article covers this topic in just a bit more detail.

The quote from that site that made this make sense to me is this:

What is at the very heart of this, is the idea that you get better results with on-location flash photography, when you make sure your ambient light registers to some extent - whether you use your aperture, ISO or shutter speed.

jdepould - Thanks for the well-done tutorial. Made me remember that I need to spend time getting this concept down. I understand the theory behind it all. Just need to put it into practice.

[xxpinballxx]

Nice work Jamie, the shots are great and explained well.
I'll have to remember all this..LOL!

[jdepould]

After a while it becomes part of the process. You think about ambient balance the same way you think about depth of field.

[peeperita]

time for me to chime in.....always late to the party and expecting a canape....

being oh so new to flash photography, i too truly appreciate your well documented non-tutorial.....i plan to give the old shutter speed for ambient versus aperture for flash control a controlled experiment for my own hands and camera......thanks to you for this now bookmarked instruction.....

now let me be lazy and ask again what was asked earlier......how do you tell the camera when to decide which "curtain" to use?.....

thanks

peeper

[Chip]

Lori and peeper -

I think first curtain and second curtain are the same as/analogous to front curtain and rear curtain flash. So, first/front curtain - the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure and all motion after the flash is blurred. Second/rear curtain - the flash fires at the end of the exposure and all motion before the flash is blurred.

To get the second/rear curtain flash activated on my D90, I hit the button with the lightning symbol on it that pops up the built in flash. Then, once the flash is popped up, hold down that same button and rotate one of the dials until "rear" is shown. If neither the "rear" nor the "eye" is shown, then you're in front/first curtain flash mode.

Hope this helps, and I hope this is right.

[jdepould]

Yeah, front/first and second/rear can be used interchangeably. As long as you know what's going on, terminology is pretty flexible.

Every camera is different, but most Nikons use the front command dial in conjunction with the flash button. On the single- and triple-digit bodies, it's the button marked with the lightning icon. On the double-digit bodies, the same button doubles as the button to deploy the pop-up flash.

I'm not sure about Canons, I think it's somewhere in the menus. It should be in the flash section of your manual.

[jsanders]

@chip,

I had a look at the aritcle on planed neil's site. Also very interesting article.
I think this technique is /will mostly be used in dark circumstances where you want to get as much ambient light as possible. This is done by playing with the shutter time.
One question i have is when you slow down the shutterspeed, will the flash then freeze the subject? Else you'll get a lot of motion blur in the photo.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by jsanders

One question i have is when you slow down the shutterspeed, will the flash then freeze the subject? Else you'll get a lot of motion blur in the photo.

Yes. If you have an extremely long shutter speed (more than a second), and there's a lot of motion, you'll probably still get some blur. Other than that it's a pretty sure bet.

[(CMC)]

Originally Posted by Chip

Lori and peeper -

I think first curtain and second curtain are the same as/analogous to front curtain and rear curtain flash. So, first/front curtain - the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure and all motion after the flash is blurred. Second/rear curtain - the flash fires at the end of the exposure and all motion before the flash is blurred.

To get the second/rear curtain flash activated on my D90, I hit the button with the lightning symbol on it that pops up the built in flash. Then, once the flash is popped up, hold down that same button and rotate one of the dials until "rear" is shown. If neither the "rear" nor the "eye" is shown, then you're in front/first curtain flash mode.

Hope this helps, and I hope this is right.

Awesome, thanks for saving me a trip to the owner's manual. Works the same on my D80.