I've always wanted to do a film where i can sit in a comfy chair and in a nice warm room on a
cold winter's evening,
and it looks like I've got it.
Anyway see all these puppies up here,
birthday cards
janey's birthday yesterday,
she's nodding and going mm
because she doesn't like to be in front of the camera.
Now the time you're most likely
to use your camera's built-in flash
like this one
is probably going to be
at a birthday party, maybe it's the kids birthday party
or maybe you've gone out to dinner with a friend and you just wanna
take a few happy snaps you know.
Now this little flash is a get you out of trouble flash,
now we're
not talking about beautiful
amazingly that portraiture here,
we're just going to look at ways
to improve the quality of light you get from your little built in flash.
A diffuser is the best way,
but what is a diffuser? a diffuser is
like a garden rose for the end of a hose pipe
to use light and to
modify light you need to understand how light works
and i find the best way
is to visualize it
i use the anallagy of water quite a lot
if you
pop up the little flash on your camera
and look at the flash tube that's this little piece at the top here
it's very small isn't it, and there's a reflector in the back, so when you
fire the flash
there's gonna be sort of a blast, a jet of light
the light is going to come streaming from this little tiny source
straight-out over there like that.
Bit like a hose pipe, if you
squirt a blast of water from a small hole like that
straight out, you've got sort of a rod haven't you? of directional light.
so what you have to do is shatter it.
If you squirt a hose pipe
like that straight against the wall
the water shatters, it turns into a mist of tiny little
droplets which sort of wrap around things.
The water becomes
soft instead of hard.
That's why i use the analagy of water for soft or hard light.
So to diffuse light
we need to shatter it,
we need to make it soft we need to make it wrap around things.
On the other side of the room here, we've got Jane's oldest son james who is currently taking
on the world here
at football, with his xbox
aren't you James? yeah, you're doing really well too mate.
If i just take a picture of James from the other side of the room, using the
little flash on the top of the camera here
and i'm only using the default camera settings
your camera will probably will default to a sixtieth of a second when you pop the
flash up, we'll be talking about changing the shutter speeds
with flash in a different film, but for now it's going with the default settings.
If i just frame up a shot with james
looking ever so manly on the other side of the room
with a naked flash like that
there's a very hard source of the light
there's lot's of bright highlights
down the side of his body, if we zoom into it and have a close look
under his jaw around his chin there's a
black shadow going on here on the fabric of the chair behind him
that's caused by this directional blast of light
so let's have a look at a diffuser,
well what i saw on the internet which i thought would be worth trying out
is a polystyrene cup, it''s as simple as that
and they're not hard to attach,
job done.
lazy man's photography i like that.
let's take a shot of James with the diffuser in place
just going to take the same shot, as i say, master piece.
That is a much softer light.
when you flick between the two,
the highlight down James's side
has disappeared he's kinda of much more evenly lit.
The shadow under his chin, it's softer.
By softer i mean instead of having a hard diffuser i mean the fine edge
the edge sort of fades
into the fabric of the sofa.
But it is still there.
I have one major mis-giving with the polystyrene cup method and that is the polystyrene
itself, that is pretty thick
that means your little flash here has got to punch through
a huge amount of polystyrene before it can get out on the other side
and make it's way across the room.
One of the good sides of this though
is that when the flash fires inside here, light
is going to rattle around and around inside
and it's going to escape at
all sorts of angles.
That's going to create a softer more wrap around light.
so there's the polystyrene cup and we're looking a bit more in
depth of what's going on in here
in a moment.
Something else you could use
one of these white plastic film canisters if you can get your hand on one.
They're a bit of a rarity these days.
I've cut a slot in the back of this one
so that
i can
slide that
he said
with both hands, here we go
with the flash
pop the lid on
and there you go, I've got a
little flash diffuser sitting over my flash gun. That's pretty cool really isn't it.
Now when i fire the flash
the flash goes off
inside the the the little plastic film canister
just like it did with the cup
the light rattles around inside there
and it will leave at all sorts of angles
because that's circular, some will be going down, up, sideways all over the place.
Take a short of james, there we go
and again it's worked very well
that's not quite as such a soft light as the polystyrene cup, but it is slightly brighter
brighter but it is a much nicer light, but it is a much nicer light than the
than the original one which had no diffuser on it at all.
The other handy thing with the little
film canister course is that it just sits on there, it's not going to fall off in a hurry
is it?.
You could also make a diffuser with something as simple as a
little piece
if i can get one out of here
which i can't,
of note paper like that.
It's a simple simple things that works so brilliantly well and that don't
cost you anything.
With a little sellotape
true blue peter fashion
put a bit across the bottom
another little bit across the top
just overlapping like that
then we have to
is get your camera
and just sit that
bit of paper underneath
bottom where that little flash head houses
bend it over,
and put the other bit
on the top like that. I've put too much tape on it,
you get your idea.
Now we've got this little
arch of paper
so when the flash fires inside here
the lights going to come forward it's going to hit this little arch
and the lights going to bounce backwards as well as shoot out either side,
imagine what a jet of water would do if i hit that surface
But light unlike water will be able to penetrate that, so a lot of it
comes straight out through it
let's have a go.
take a picture of James
you think the white paper.
That's quite a nice look, i'm not sure whether i prefer that or
the film canister, there's not much in it, i think the chin shadow is a little bit
softer
we're getting into sort of nicky picky fine details here, but
whichever way you look at it, it's a much nicer light
than you would get from the flash on it's own, it's a very very simple way
of doing things.
One of the simplest
ways to modify light
in this kind of environment would be to use
a plain white business card
now normally, if i was doing this i would plug a blue tack
into the well here where my flash sits into
and then stick the card
into the blue tack, you need to make sure
sticky into the blue tacked up forty five degrees to hold it there, now
i keep a bit of blue tack on my tripod for these sorts of events
and as luck would have it as soon i went to get it just now i discovered
that it has fallen off, so
you're going to have to trust me.
i'm going to have to hold it
like that
at forty five degrees
focus on James and shoot a picture.
Straight away you can see
a big difference between that shot and any of the others
the light is
really really nice and soft
there's a bit of a shadow going on behind James on the fabric of the
chair
but not much and it's all beautifully evenly lit.
So why is that?
Let's analyze what's going on for a minute shall we
polystyrene cup first
flash fires
it's inside this cup
light expands inside the cup and it starts to escape
some of it's going behind me and it's hitting that white wall there and bouncing forward
some will be coming out through the top it will be coming out at the sides
and all this sort of rattles around this white room and remember we're in this small
white room
bounces of the walls
and then it comes over here
and it wraps itself around
mister bean here
He doesn't like being called that, not now he's big boy.
Anyway so it comes through here and creates a bit of a shadow on the back.
The film canister is a very similar thing
but it's not quite as thick as the polystyrene cup, so there's more light coming out.
You're going to have a better range using this method
but a similar things happening
the flash fires inside that little tube
the light or water
tries to burst through it in what ever direction it can,
so some of it's going up
down, sideways
out the back, bouncing off the walls in here and again
it's wrapping itself around Mr James over here.
But the majority of the light is gonna be coming straight
through like that.
It's still directional
but it's a bit more of a shower, so it's not quite as painfully harsh
as it would be without a diffuser.
That's bashing against James and it's still causing a bit of a shadow over here behind
him.
It's going to be very similar with the white piece of paper
Only more light will escape out of either side to bounce of the walls.
We really are rattling light around the place
and a lot of a will come through like that.
The most interesting one
is own business card. What's going on there because
that's not very translucent is it? that's pretty much a light stopper, well
our jet of water or flash
comes out the flash
and it hits that forty five degree card
if you hit the wall at forty-five degrees with a plaster water
the water leaves at the same angle it
entered, so the light comes out here it hits that card it bounces straight up into the air
it also is going to belt out either side
it's going to hit the ceiling pretty hard.
That's going to turn
this whole seating area here into a big sort of a light box
which is going to reflect light back down here again.
The light that hits this or water
that hits this and sprays out either side is gonna hit
this wall and that wall
all that light is rattling round and round inside that room
and it's wrapping around James.
The thing is
there is no directional light coming from this at all
because light can't penetrate through it very well.
there might be the tiniest bit
but not much.
so the key to understanding modifying light is also about understanding
the environment you're in
when you modify it.