PWacademy: Get Flash with Flash

Knowledge is love, light and vision

A day on the get flash with flash workshop

with terry hewlett arps author of Flash Photography - Art and Techniques

On-camera to off-camera flash

Balanced window light with on-camera flash
demonstrating just how bad this flash light is,
its flat and adds no structure to the subject's face

The get flash with flash workshop proved to be a journey of discovery and inspiration for everyone involved. It's fair to say that all the delegates attended the workshop because theory either has a gap in their knowledge of using flash or they had rarely taken their flash out of its case.

The morning started with a brief introduction to speedlights and the fundamental principles of light, being intensity, direction, quality and colour, all of which was to be integrated into the day.

Exposed for window light - no flash

After coffee we started to look at flash exposure compensation and balancing ambient daylight with the flash. Its true we started with the flash on the camera - the worst possible place it could be - however with guidance the delegates were very quickly able to control the background window light with their speedlights.

The progression from on-camera flash to off-camera flash was seamless and everyone was soon shooting with radio triggered Yongnuo flash units supplied by PW. those that were not conversant with the use of a light meter were provided with instruction from terry, taking them through the process of ambient and flash readings.

We needed to take control over the window light so a meter reading was taken both in camera (a reflected reading) and with a light meter (and incident reading) to obtain the true ambient exposure. Once this was achieved the delegates took photographs with their on camera flash units.

Off-camera single flash using a shutter speed
that exceed the camera's flash synch speed

We then removed the on-camera speedlights and moved to the off-camera set-up that comprised of a Yongnuo 560 II flash with a 40cm intermit soft box mounted on the intermit strobesXS bracket. The flash was triggered with an Elinchrom universal radio transmitter and receiving unit, a configuration that works across both Nikon and Canon users.

Off-camera flash with second hair light

Shots were taken to demonstrate the significance of the camera's Flash Synchronisation speed and the problems that can ensue if it is exceeded without high speed synch and a dedicated flash system.

The final shots taken with two Yonganuo's, the main on the left with a 40cm soft box and the hair light from the right with a Gary Fong honeycomb grid.

Using some very simple techniques the delegates moved from a very poor image (the top one) to a much improved shot, giving consideration to framing and composition.

On location

After a buffet lunch we all moved outside to a location behind Malmesbury Abbey and started to work with the available light.

The location was chosen to challenge the delegates to produce a shot that made full use of the available light and balance it all with flash. We had taken out with us the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra that is a 400w/s unit, almost 7 times more powerful than a speedlight, combined with a 60cm soft box.

The location presents us with a pattern of light produced by the overhead wooden pergola from the hard direct sunlight, the task was to balance it all so the final image produced used the patterns created as part of the image and not to suppress them but light the model. The Quadra was placed to the right about 60cm above the models head to fill out the dark shadows created bu the direct sunlight which was lighting her face, and creating the shadows.

The image was shot in colour and i have added it here, it's a personal preference whether you prefer this version or the monochrome image above
Watch out for our Monochrome Magic workshop later this year.

As always the process was to measure the ambient light first to determine a starting point and then balance the flash accordingly.

Candle light

After a warm interlude outside everyone returned to the studio to shoot simulated candle lit subjects. Candle power is very low and would require a very high ISO to achieve a reasonable result however it would be jam packed with noise so the task was to simulate the candle light with flash. Now most of the articles stress that you should turn your flash off, however the challenge was to simulate the candle light as closely as possible.

Now candle light has a Kelvin temperature of 2500K and the flash has a colour temperature of 5500K so you can either gel the flash or adjust your dolour temperature on the camera to warm up the lighting so the white balance in the camera was set to 3500K, I did not want the image to too warm.

Flash lit candle lantern

I used a tea light lantern bought from Wilko for £15.00 and constructed a flash with a cardboard snoot to light the lantern from below. I needed to a little DIY to the lantern, drilling holes into the base to allow the flash light to penetrate into the lantern. Once the light was inside it bounced around and flooded out through the fretwork and open door onto Sarah's face.

The lighting pattern on the white backdrop was achieved with some artificial flowers through which a flash fitted with a honeycomb was fired. This was just to break up the white background, the angle of the gridded light also produced a slight vignette to the background.

I have shown the colour version, however for those that love the monochrome magic I have illustrated the version created using Silver Efex pro 2. There has also been some Photoshop and Portrait Professional post production work carried out just to soften the skin tones as light attacking the side of Sarah's face from the lantern accentuated the texture of the skin, not very attractive.

A flash lit subject including candle light

Finally we prepared a set with a candle in the shot and lit to replicate light both from the candle and also from the tablet Sarah was viewing. This was at the end of the day and everyone was running on reserve energy as, like all our workshops, the day was full on with a comprehensive programme and multiple sets and shooting opportunities.