Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography
right here on AdoramaTV
brought to you by Adorama.
It's the camera store
that has everything
for photographers
like you and like me.
Well I’m joined here by Natasha,
and we are in an environment
that you probably
shoot in all the time.
We have a really bright outside, big windows
and a really dark inside.
What we want to do is,
I want to take a picture
of Natasha inside
and make sure I also capture
the light from the outside
and balance those two things.
Well how do we do that?
There are a bunch
of different ways to do it
but essentially what we want to do
is we want to use an external Flash
to add the appropriate
amount of light
to our scene,
while still capturing
the ambient light
to the best of our ability.
That's a lot of words,
but basically what it means is
I have to first figure out
how much light I need
to have coming from my Flash,
that's the appropriate amount of light.
I need to make it flattering,
In other words,
I need to use some kind
of light modifier
to make Natasha look great
and then I have to figure out how
to set my camera
so that I don't just
get something that looks nasty.
I need to have that ambient light
coming in and capturing as much as
I possibly can
so those two things blend together
so we're going to do that
in three different ways today.
Now the easiest way to do this
and if you're shooting
maybe summer family
photos or Christmas portraits
or something where you just need
to do something really quick
and easy and fast
is to use this.
This is your trusty old speed light
the nice thing about speed lights
is they have a feature built in
to do exactly what you're trying to do.
So to do this,
what we're going to have you do,
so Natasha is going to come over here
and we're going to have her maybe
looking at some flowers
and thinking awe it's spring.
So what we're going to do,
the first thing we need to do
is to make sure that
our flash is set to the
correct mode
and so you want to put this
on TTL mode
or E-TTL mode
if you have a Canon Flash.
That's the standard default mode
and then you have to turn on something
called high-speed sync.
Now I've already done that
for this Flash.
We've done a bunch of videos
on high-speed sync,
so make sure you check
those out to know exactly
how to do that
or check your user manual.
So the Flash
is an E-TTL mode
on high-speed sync
now your camera
what we want to do is to put this
on Aperture priority mode.
So AV on a Canon
A on most other cameras,
so that means we can set
our aperture.
The camera is going to figure
out the correct shutter speed.
On aperture priority mode
what the camera will do
is first expose
for the ambient light
and then adjust the flash automatically
so that those two things match.
It all just happens magically.
So once we've done that
let's see exactly
what we get.
So Natasha is going to be
looking at those flowers just like that,
beautiful, that looks pretty good.
We have one issue
and that is when I take a picture
the flash is bouncing off the window
and so I need to make sure I'm at
an angle and so that flash is bouncing
into my picture but it works pretty well.
I can also try to bounce up the ceiling
but the problem with that is,
you just need so much light
that well sometimes it
doesn't work out.
So this is great if you need something
that works really fast.
If you're shooting something
that's not really expansive,
maybe one person or two
and if you're working in that situation
where to have a really bright sunlight,
if you're doing those types of things
and we want a little bit more flattering light,
a little bit better control?
We need to go to the next step up
and that's an Off-Camera Flash system
that we can use maybe a Softbox
or an umbrella,
so let's do that next.
Well those are a good start on the issue
though with this speed light is, it’s such
a small light source,
that it has lots
of specular highlights.
In other words if we look
really closely at the picture
that we shot of Natasha,
you can see,
that her cheek is all shining.
It looks like she's sweating
and it's not even hot in here
and so we want to make sure
that we're really complimentary
to our subjects
and so instead of using a really
small light source,
like the speed light,
we're going to go to the next step
and that is to use
a small off-camera flash Softbox.
So Natasha if you'll zip over there.
Let me show you how I’ve set this up.
So this is a two foot octave box
from Pro Photo
on an OCF,
Off-Camera Flash system.
Now the nice thing about
the Profoto OCF system
is it has high-speed sync,
so I'm doing
exactly the same thing
I did with my speed light
I'm using the TTL
through the lens metering
of my camera
and I have set my remote here
to make sure that I have it set to
high-speed sync
and TTL mode.
Now that we're just fully automatic.
Then I'm using
this nice soft box here
and that's going to soften the light
so that Natasha's face
isn't so shiny
I can position this
and start shooting.
Now one of the things that is great
about having an off-camera flash
is I can change
the direction of that light
and that helps me avoid reflections
in the glass.
It also helps me shape the light
in the way
that I want to do that
and so without further ado,
we're going to start shooting
and I'll show you my results.
Well there's a third scenario
that we haven't talked about
and that is using
a fully manual system,
so I have over here
I've got a Profoto Acute 2 pack.
Now why would I want to use something
that doesn't have TTL
when I'm doing something
that's difficult?
Well the reason is if you want
to do something a little bit more creative.
So for example we want a full-length shot
maybe we want a wide angle
of the interior of the room.
We need a lot more light
and to make that
light look pleasing
we need a much larger light modifier
and that means we
need more power
and more power comes
from those manual systems
they're 1200, 2400
4,800 watt seconds.
They're really, really punchy
and so we have to figure out
how to do this
it's not as complicated
as you might think.
So what we're going to
do is we're going to start with the
ambient light because we can't control it,
we have to react to it.
We can't turn the Sun up and down
and we can't shut things
on and off outside.
We have to take what we can get
so we have to start there
and then we'll make our
adjustments to our flash to match that.
So we're going to do a little trick here
because outside we have a really
contrasting bright light
and if I include
the trees and the sky.
Well I'm going to have all kinds of problems
but the trees are actually darker
than the sky
and so what I'm going to do is,
I'm going to meter
on the trees out there
using my camera's
built-in TTL metering.
It's really simple.
I'll put my camera
in manual mode.
I'm going to set my shutter speed
at my camera's sync speed,
so when we're using
an external manual flash,
we have a sync speed,
which is the fastest our shutter can go.
On this camera
I'm going to stick to
a 1/200 of a second.
You might have a camera
that does 250
maybe it's 160
but for today
we're going to stick with 200
just to make sure everything is fine.
Then I'm going
to adjust my aperture
until my meter shows me
a proper exposure
because we're dealing
with bright light.
I'm keeping my ISO really low
so I'm shooting
at ISO 100.
So ISO 100
shutter speed of 200.
I point at these trees out here.
I take a meter reading
and I get a value of f/4
which is great that means we still
get that shallow depth of field
that we want
now the next thing
is to meter our flash
so Natasha if you can go over here.
We've given her a nice grape juice drink
to emulate maybe
a nice cocktail party
or something
and then what I have to do
is I'm going to meter toward this light
and so I've got everything set up
with my PocketWizards.
I meter that.
It meters at 3 2
so I just need to make an
adjustment.
I'll do that,
take another meter reading.
Now we're at f/4
yeah so
ISO 100
shutter 200 f/4
so now my flash
and my ambient light agree
and I can start taking pictures
now one of the things
I want to do in this situation,
is to sort of eliminate a lot
of the clutter in the room
and so I'm going to use a long lens.
I'm going to walk way over here
and start taking pictures
so I'll do that and I'll show you
the before and after results.
There you have it.
Three ways to balance
your flash with the ambient light.
It’s not so difficult.
Make sure you use
high-speed sync, if you can
and if you're using a manual flash,
start with the ambient light.
Tune everything in
and then just balance your flash to that
and you'll get some great results.
Thanks Natasha
for being a wonderful model today
I think we've got some really good pictures
and don't you forget
to subscribe to AdoramaTV,
it's absolutely free
just click the button
and subscribe today
also check out
the Adorama Learning Center
there are tons of articles
for doing Flash photography
and light modifiers
and rear curtain sync
and high-speed syncing,
all of those kinds of things.
Check it out again it's free,
so do that.
Thanks again for joining me
and I will see you again next time.