How do you shoot an indoor event using
on-camera flash, and still make it look
natural.
I'll show you it right after this.
Hey everybody...
welcome back to Ask David Bergman,
right here on AdoramaTV.
Today I've got a question from Ed C. and
he asks when shooting an indoor event
with on-camera flash, what settings do
you use for ISO and shutter speed so the
photos don't look harsh, and I don't have
to change anything between each image..
And that's a great question, I shoot a
lot of events myself, maybe like a
corporate event with a lot of people in
a big ball room or maybe you're just
with your friends outside you're
shooting at night, or a wedding, or
something like that.
So the thing is that's a run-and-gun type
situation, where you're moving around a
lot and you're not stationary, and your distance
from your camera to your subject is
changing constantly.
So you really can't set up preset flashes
on a manual exposure right?
So to use an on-camera flash,
something I do quite often, so this
is what my setup, so I'm using the Canon
600d xrt flash right, and there's
actually a version two of this now,
but I still have the old ones.
I'm going to demonstrate with a EOS R that's the
mirrorless with the grip on it, and then
this is the 28-70mm f/2 lens, which I love.
So let's talk about how we do this, most
people when they want to shoot on-camera
flash, what they do is they just go ahead
and put this on the camera, and then they
turn it on, and that's how they shoot.
So I'm going to show you what happens
with that..
We're here with Brooke today, in the studio.
Hey Brooke, what's happening..
and so I'm gonna start with that, so we're
1/200th of a second at f/4 at 100 ISO and
the camera - on camera flash, and I'm just
gonna go ahead and blast away at the
beautiful Brooke right here, and boom, all
right, so you can see that's pretty harsh,
right, dark background, harsh light, the
reason the light is so hard as we say,
it's not a soft light, it's a hard light,
is because the the softness of the light
depends on the perceived size of the
light, in relation to the subject so this
is a relatively small source, actually a
very small source, and I'm far away.
If the closer you get, the bigger it gets
in relation to the subject, but this
light is never really going to get that
big in relation... because it's just a small
source by itself, so you can see that
light is pretty harsh.
It's got a lot of shadows, and we also
have to deal with the background,
but as far as softening
this light, what I've always done is.
I like to take this flash, and most of
them you can angle them up, and I'm gonna
angle it straight up towards the ceiling.
Now you can play around with angles,
maybe a little forward, maybe a little
backward depending on your ceiling, but
in this case we're here in the studio.
We've got a nice sort of brown warm tone
ceiling, so what's gonna happen is the
light is going to hit that ceiling, it's
gonna spread out on the big surface and
then gonna wash down on her because of
the color.
It's actually gonna warm up a
little bit too, it's gonna pick up some
of that color and we're gonna have a
nice warm wash of light of soft light on
Brooke.
So let's go ahead and demonstrate
the other, one more thing I'm gonna do is
a lot of flashes have this little white
card, and I'm gonna pop that up, the
reason for that is, what that does it
gives me just a little more kick of
light forward.
So I don't lose too much light back behind
me it's just gonna push a little bit more
light forward and also it's gonna give my
subject, it's gonna give Brooke a little glint
in her eye, just that little catch light that
just gives you your subject a little bit
more life than if they didn't have that.
So I usually put that white card up as
well, so let's go ahead, you know what
else.. I've also used my hand before,
just to push some more light forward,
and it's kind of a warm tone, also I've
done that, but let's do this with the white
card.
I'm going to show you the same exposure
1/200th f/4 100, and Brooke looks great and
boom, okay, so now you can see how that
looks... it's a much softer light, it's a
much nicer more natural looking light on
her, however we still have to deal with
our background, so the trick here is to
balance foreground and background, I've
talked about this before.
You've seen this in my videos right,
so how do you do that?
Well you have to use a combination
of ISO and shutter speed, and it really
depends on how high you're comfortable
pushing up your ISO, it depends on your
camera, older cameras I would keep the
ISO kind of low, newer cameras you can
push it a little bit higher,
but as you raise up your ISO,
you're gonna start to bring in that light
from the background, now this works
best in a situation where
the subject is darker than the
background, let's say like I said, you're
at a wedding, and you pull the couple out
from from the middle of the room, and
pull them off to the side maybe, where
there's no direct light hitting them, and
then the back of the ballroom, the entire
ballroom in the background is all, is
well lit, so that's really nice, because
you can expose for that background using
your combination of like I said ISO,
and shutter speed, and then
pop the flash in, bouncing it off the
ceiling to fill in the foreground.
So what I'm gonna do in this case,
I'm gonna go to 3200 ISO, which
looks really great on this camera,
this camera I can
push 6400, 8000, no problem it looks great.
So I'm gonna go 6400,
and leave my shutter speed at 1/200th
of a second still at f/4,
and make that same exact picture
of Brooke here in the same spot, and
there you go, and you can see now the
background is much more well lit, the
light on her is softer, it's much more
pleasant, it's much more natural-looking.
Now the only other thing I'm gonna say
about this is, if you don't have a
ceiling you've got to find another way
to deal with that, because if you can't
bounce the ceiling, you need other modifiers.
So I've been using lately the
Magmod system, and this is the Magmod
bounce, and what this does they make two
similar items like this one is called
the sphere and one is the bounce the
sphere is sort of a round thing that
pushes light in all directions, and it's
really great when you have a good
ceiling just like this, it's really efficient.
This one though works much
better when you don't have a ceiling, it
so, if you if you don't know what the
place looks like in advance, or you just
know there's no ceiling, you're outdoors
and have no ceiling to bounce off, this is
something you would use.
I shoot on the tour
I'm on right now,
I shoot meet and greet every day,
and this is what I use and the
pictures look really consistent.
This thing is very efficient at pushing
light forward, so the way this works is...
you have to get the little magnet part
that you put on the flash, and all you do
is you stretch this out over there, and
once this is on, there it's a little
tricky to get on there, but once it's on
there, it's on there for good, and there's
magnets on here, and all you have to do
is stick this thing on there, and it it's
a really strong magnet.
So once that's on there,
you go ahead and put that on the
flash, and you shoot it like this, and
it's going to push all that light forward,
and almost none of its going to hit the
ceiling, so let's go ahead and do that.
On Brooke one more time...
and perfect, and so you can see now the
light has lost that warm color of the
ceiling, because we're just pushing all
that white light forward, but it's still
a nice wash of light, and I've balanced
it with the background, so it's really
personal taste.
Again for me, I use this one.
I don't have a ceiling, if I have a
ceiling I'd rather use that for the, the
warmth, and for the the way...
how natural that looks
to be coming from overhead.
So hope that answers your question Ed,
run and gun situations, there is a lot of
ways you can deal with it,
but you can absolutely make it
look natural, and certainly you don't
want to have to change it after every setting.
I've been using TTL on this
exclusively, if you try to shoot manual
you're gonna have to change it from
frame to frame.
So ETTL is the way to go,
thanks so much for asking that question.
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