Ordinary to extraordinary is a collection of freelance photography and a veritable cornucopia of random musings, made by Larry Wyatt.

28 December 2007

Off-camera flash



This is a capture of my son playing a boxing game on his new Wii(TM). It's shot with a Canon 40D with the following parameters:

400 ISO
f4.5
1/25 sec

He was moving the controllers as he played.

One of the banes of good photography for many is the use of on camera flash. Many months ago I stumbled onto a sight called "Strobist." It is the BEST lighting site on the net.

What David Hobby, the Strobist Master, teaches is how to use small flashes, off-camera, to achieve excellent lighting results. And he achieves this quite masterfully.

For this shot, two strobes(a Nikon SB25 and a cheap Quantaray that acts as an iptical slave) are used on light stands in each corner of the room, set on 1/4 power and shot at the ceiling. They were triggered with a Gadget Infinity remote for one and the other was optically slaved.

You should notice that the light from the flash and the ambient light in the room are balanced. That is, the flash doesn't overpower the ambient light. Look at the reflections of the Christmas tree lights in the fireplace. This would be nearly impossible with direct on camera flash.

Compare this capture to the following photo of him opening the Wii(TM) shot with a 50mm f2.8 lens without any flash, on-camera or off-camera.




Check out David's sight at http://www.strobist.com

©2007 Lawrence H. Wyatt

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