- [Jay] Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens we're shooting out on
location here in Los Angeles. We're shooting a swordsman in a setting sun
using TTL flash. Let's see how we get that TTL flash off the camera and balance it
with the setting sun.
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When I light, I have to control where the
light is placed and on the camera is rarely a choice for me. So today, we're
going to look at how you get your TTL flash off the camera and balance it with
that setting sun. I'm going to use my PocketWizards and a Canon TTL 600EX and
also the Strobies Pro-Flash TLi-C. This gives me two light sources that, combined
with my PocketWizards, gives me the flexibility of getting this away from the
camera. Let's see how we can set this up. I set my Canon 600 flash on a PocketWizard
Flex TT5 and mounted it with a Photoflex bracket shooting through a small octodome.
I set the zone to A for my key light. The Strobies Pro-Flash TLi-C I will set on
another Flex TTi5 in zone B for my rim light. My assistant is going to Hollywood
it. In Hollywood, that means you just hold the light and not put it on a stand. I
don't know why I had to throw that in, but I did.
On the camera, I'll put the PocketWizard Mini TTi and the AC3 zone controller. The
zone controller allows me to change the power on each strobe head from the camera.
I'll put the TTL flashes in manual and control the power output from the camera.
This is not meant to be a PocketWizard ad, it's just the way that I solved this
problem. It worked great but was a bit expensive.
Canon has a remote trigger for TTL flashes but you can only use it with Canon and not
with other TTL flashes. So that's gonna be a lesson for another day. When I use the
AC3 and put my TTL flash in manual, I can now control the flash output from 164th
power to full power. My camera settings are 800 ISO, F10 for deep focus and 1/80th
of a second to balance the setting sun. At this point, I don't have any light on my
talent, it's just the ambient light which is basically our sky. So we're gonna turn
our strobes on, we're gonna put them up at full power. So, here's our first image.
It's too bright on his face so I'm gonna dial this down, the key light down by one
stop, by rolling the dial from three, counterclockwise, to two.
This is a little too dark, so I'm gonna dial back up one third by moving the dial
clockwise to two thirds and take a new image. This looks great, so let's go ahead
and get started shooting. Our backlight is balanced to our rim and key and the three
of them are working great together right now. As the sun sets, we're going to need
to balance our exposure with the setting sun. The aperture will stay the same, but
the shutter is going to need to be lengthened. The aperture is going to stay
the same because our strobes are balanced to the aperture. If we lengthen the
shutter, it will not affect the strobe exposure on his face at all, but it's
going to brighten the sky that is not lit by our strobes.
Here's an image in our original settings. The sun's gone down so our sky's gotten
very dark. This is just too dark, we need to lengthen the shutter to 1/15th of a
second. Now we're getting the exposure we need and the sky in the background. But
remember, the aperture stays the same so the light on the person's face stays the
same. I'll lengthen this exposure beyond a second to keep that sky balanced with our
strobe light on the face of our talent up front. That gives me a lot more time to
shoot into that setting sun and gives you some pretty dramatic looks, actually.
Let's take a look at some of the final un-retouched images.
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- This is fun to work with TTL flashes in a setting sun. I like TTL flashes so much
better when I can get them away from the camera, I can get modifiers on them that
give me the ability to shape them and to use them the way I like to use strobes.
This worked a lot better for me so I like this setup. Again, a bit expensive with
all the PocketWizards but worked flawlessly. I hope you enjoyed our lesson
on TTL Flash in the setting sun. Keep those cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
♪ [music] ♪