Hey this is Daniel Norton.
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Erika and we're gonna talk a little bit today,
about things you can do with your small
flash, to make it not suck!
And what I mean by that is, you've got this little
tiny light... you turn it on your camera,
it's generally not going to create the
most flattering light in the world, so
there's a few things you can do to make
the light much nicer from it, so you
could always keep a small flash with you,
and basically get great shots wherever
you are. So number one, I'm just gonna get
myself set up here. I've got the, the
Profoto, it went on top of my camera,
but I don't have it turned on yet. I'm
just gonna take a shot with no flash, to
show you guys what it looks like. Okay so
that's more or less a black frame right?
I'm at f/8 at 250, it's pretty dark in
here, and this is a bright studio.. right?
So, if you were inside a house, or
something, this is kind of giving you
that equivalent. If I take my flash and
just turn it on, and I could turn on from
here, but I actually... because I'm using
multiple flashes here, I'm actually using
my control here to make life easier for
myself. So I'm gonna focus in and show
you guys... good... okay... now we've got
that classic kind of on-camera flash. Look
it's really smack in the face, very hard
light. You know.. the, the shadow, and her
chin is really abrupt, it's got no detail
on the face, 'cause it's just blown back... if she
was... you know... sweaty or glowy, she'd be
blown out. I mean right now, she's at the
brink of it, some people like this look
for certain feels, and of course you can
do that right? But I'm thinking in this
video, we'll talk more about kind of a
more classic portrait feel. So the number
one thing is... to make your light
better.. is to kick it off of the
camera. So I'm gonna take this off the
camera. I'm actually not gonna use that
one, I'm gonna use another one. I put a
couple here on stands, so that I don't
have to spend much time setting them up
for you guys. So I've got this one, over
here, just on a stand. It's on a c-stand,
and by taking it off camera, I can
position it wherever I like. So I can put
it closer, which is gonna make it a
little bit softer. But really it's not
gonna be that soft, as it's so small, but I can
put it higher, and get a good angle on
it. Erica has a nice shape to her face, so
let me try to shape her face a bit with
this one. Okay. So this guy here...
Okay... so we're on.. One trick here is you can
fire the flash from camera position, and
see where it's falling. So that's
actually kind of nice like that.
Okay so, here we go, then we can see here,
now I've taken a little bit of control of the
space, right? Because the background's a
bit darker now. She's got some shape to
her face, a little more dramatic, but it's
still a really hard light. I mean look at
the shadow on her neck here. You know
it's really tight around her nose, we're
losing some detail. It's good in a sense,
because it's not that direct, on-camera
flash. But it doesn't really give us a
nice quality of light on her face. So the
number two thing that you want to do is..
make your light source larger. You can do
that a lot of different ways, you could
bounce it. You could use a reflector card
and knock it back in, bounce off the ceiling... whatever!
I like to use a small softbox,
I have this one over here. It's the
Profoto 1 x 1.3... so this is small
enough that you could keep basically in
your bag, which is why I pick this one,
and put it roughly in the same spot. Or
turn off that other light, and again
I'm only switching lights, just for
convenience here. You can just be using
the same flash. Obviously okay, it's in my
shot a little bit, whenever you're using
a softbox or something, you want to move
it in as close as you can. So basically
move it in till you see it in the shot,
and then back it up a little bit.
So here we go.. yeah, now we can see the
difference there.
Right? Hard light, soft light.. right?
And that's not even a gigantic soft box,
but look at how nice the light is on
their face. It's still small enough that
we have texture and beauty. Right. We can
see a little shine, but it's large enough
to be soft enough, and give us that nice
kind of a transition into the shadow. So
that's actually pretty nice as is, but to
make it even a little bit nicer....
Tip number three, is to use some of the light
in the space. So I'm at 250 now, at f/8.
I'm just gonna look at my camera, and use
the meter, and I'm gonna dial my shutter
speed, until I get about one stop under
the ambient light. Which is 1/16th
of a second.
Take a shot, we can see now,
right.. This one's got shape and tone. This
one feels a little more natural down
here. So depending on the look you like..
Right? You could do either, and of course
you can balance it wherever you want.
I went one stop under,
we could even go, you know, right on
exposure. It's now we're at a 1/30th.
Now at this point you're going to risk blur,
right, right that's still sharp. We're
good there.
But if she was moving too much, like if
you were taking like quick shots a 1/30th
might be a little slow, and what you'd
end up getting is.. like a popping blur
effect. Which is a whole other video. So
we're not gonna go into that. But you can
see here that I went from... oop... that's
ALL the shots. The difference between
pressing control and command. There we go,
we went from this, which is a classic
on-camera flash. To this.. right?
And what did we do?
We took the flash off the camera,
we made the flash larger and we mixed it
with the available light in the space. So
those three things together are gonna
take your shot from this.. like harsh
on-camera light, to a nice portrait light.
You could bring It around here... on vacation
you want to make portraits of people and stuff.
Take one flash with you, a little tiny
softbox, and then get a lot of stuff done.
So leave some comments below. Let me know
what you guys, your favorite modifier.
Let's say to put on a small flash might
be. Be sure to follow Erica.. we will put
her details in the description. Be sure
to follow me and of course subscribe to
AdoramaTV and I'll see you next time OnSet.