Achieving great photos using flash is not an area where only professionals are allowed. Using simple techniques to control and enhance the quality of light produced by your speedlite will allow you to create great images, far from the red eyes and washed out look usually associated with flash photography.
Certainly one critical decision point in any photography is the lens to be used. While it’s actually distance which determines the perspective on a subject, a focal lenght of a lens will allow you to play with that distance to achieve the desired perspective and composition.
This is a small comparison of four focal lenghts on a portrait of Anne Sophie.
Thanks to Anne Sophie for being such a great model!
| 17mm [EF 17-40 f/4L] | 50mm [EF 50mm f/1.8 MK1] |
| 100mm [EF 100 f/2.8 Macro] | 200mm [EF 70-200 f/4 L] |
All images were exposed: 160/f5.6 ISO 200 using the quite unstable natural light (fast passing clouds) combined with a very reliable speedlite 580EX diffused with a portable Lastolite Ezybox
A new feature in the latests EOS Digital SLR’s. The Picture Styles allows you to tune the response of the sensor for specifical rendition of tonalities. It’s the digital equivalent of choosing different films like de saturated Velvia or the subtle Portra.
| Standard | Neutral | Portrait |
Still exploring every day stuff from another point of view. This time, with another kind of light. I masked a 580EX speedlite flash with a black card where I made a hole in the middle and placed it behind this litchee skin. The result was a great red glow like a SF cocoon that is about to explode.
We wash our hands many times a day, but how many times we realize how the water moves, splashes and flows around? Our daily life is full of wonders and details that we so often overlook.
The movement of the water on this pic was captured using flash to ‘freeze’ the action. The flash was positioned behind the hand to offer back light, both increasing the visual impact of the image and allowing to use as few flash power as possible to obtain the fastest response. I’ll be explaining this technique in more detail in the future.
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EOS 5D + EF 100f/2.8 Macro. Speedlite 580EX flash in wireless ETTL mode, controlled by a ST-E2 on the camera.
Backlight picture of a freshly steamed Broccoli on a spoon. Taken with an 580EX speedlite on a masked Ezybox softbox behind the spoon. The camera (EOS 5D) was set on manual mode with an EF100/f2.8 Macro lens and attached with an ST-E2 wireless flash controller to command the off-camera flash in E-TTL.