Evolving Photographer: May 2013

Like a lot of amateurs, I find flashes and lighting intimidating. I hate how on-camera integrated flashes look in the end, so I try and use only available light. I do know, however, that amazing colors and action can be captured with a flash. And I know that I'm missing out.

Fortunately, a friend of mine has a Nikon SB-700 Speedlight, and was happy to let me try it out! Now, I read all about flashes, and power settings, and other interesting things. But, the one thing that I couldn't find were examples of those settings. We only post the good shots, right? So, here it is. The quick and dirty guide to speedlight results!

Camera settings were identical for each picture, and the subject was the same distance: 1/200, f/1.8, approximately 6 feet away. I will present three photos at each setting. One with a wide illumination pattern, one at standard, and one taken with the built-in wide panel diffuser. This is pretty image heavy, but I think it's an interesting look in detail at lighting for the novice.

What I found most interesting about the below images was that shooting on full power doesn't just drain your batteries - in a standard indoor environment with not much in the way of ambient light, this will overexpose your shot when doing a direct ceiling bounce. Only the full power, 90 degree bounce with wide illumination looks halfway decent in terms of color and shadow. But as the other shots show, you can just dial down the power and get the same shot while having a shorter recycle time!

Wide illumination consistently gave the best light, and seemed to kill the hard shadows on the underside of my table. That same shadow only started to disappear at 75 degrees with standard illumination, and never went away with the built-in diffuser.

So where is the happy place? The answer is the worst one out there! It depends! What kinds of colors are you going for? What kinds of shadows do you want present in the picture, or removed? What is your environment like? The beautiful thing with digital photography is that you can experiment and get a feel for what you like very cheaply. This project would have been two rolls of film, plus development costs, all for pictures that, in the long run, are solely for learning. The freedom that digital allows is perfect for learning lighting!

Equipment Used

Nikon D3100 Camera
35mm f/1.8 lens
SB-700 Speedlight (borrowed)
The Thinker

Images

I couldn't help myself. Here's the scene with available light

The top two images in each set will have the wide illumination on the left and standard on the right. The third picture will be with the diffuser.

Flash Angle: Zero Degrees
Power: 1/1