EXCERPT

10Lighting

The Process of Controlling Light

In an ideal world, the light would always be perfect. Shadows wouldn’t be too dark, but your sub-ject would have enough light on it to show contour and texture; your image would be filled with an approp riate warm glow (or cool, depending on your need); and all of this light would be constant and last for hours, giving you plenty of time to get your shot.

Of course, it’s not an ideal world, which means that you will often find wonderful subject matter, but it won’t be worth shooting due to bad, flat, or boring light. While there’s not much you can do but wait and hope when you’re shooting landscapes under bad lighting conditions, if you’re shooting portraits or still life scenes, you have a tremendous number of options that allow you to craft the light exactly the way you want it. You may be surprised to find that with just a few dollars and some simple tools, you can greatly improve both studio and location shots.

There are many ways to control the light in your scene. You can use reflectors to bounce light onto your subject, or diffusers and flags to shade your subject from light. Arti fi-cial light sources run the gamut from the small pop-up flash on a camera to large banks of strobes or continuous studio lights. Lights can be complex pieces of gear, and learning to light well is something you can study for the rest of your life. However, lighting any type of scene with any kind of lighting technology will be much easier when you learn that the type of light you’re using is not as import ant as the role that light is serving.

In this chapter we’re going to learn some lighting theory and practice that will help you get better results right away,

with whatever lighting technology you have. These theo-ries will continue to be the basis for all lighting decisions you make, regardless of how advanced your lighting skills become, and no matter what lighting technology you use in the future.

Even if you’re not interested in artificially lighting your scenes, this chapter will still be valuable to you, because it may change the way you think about working with the nat-ural light that you find in the world.

Understanding the Purpose of a LightWhen lighting for a photo (or video), most lights serve one of three roles, they are either a key light, a fill light, or a backlight. Not every scene will have all three roles filled and some lights will serve more than one role. (In very complex lighting situations you might also have accent lights that illuminate specific things in your scene.)

When trying to understand the light in a scene, or try-ing to make a decision about what light a scene needs, your easiest course of action is to figure out which of these roles are being filled, and by which lights. From there you can make decisions about which roles you think that the scene needs.

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Key light: sometimes referred to as the main light, the key light is the primary source of illumination for your subject. All lights cast shadows; in Figure 10.01 you can see that our single key light is casting a lot of shadows onto the left side of the woman’s face.

Fill light: A fill light brightens the shadow areas on your subject and often serves to pro-vide a level of ambient illumination for the rest of your scene (see Figure 10.02). You usually don’t want your fill light to be as bright as your key light. Keeping the key light brighter will ensure that you maintain some shadows on your subject, which will give it contour and depth. In Figure 10.02, you can see that the right side, where the key light is, casts stronger shadows than the left side. This is sometimes referred to as ratioing the lights.

Backlight: as the name implies, a backlight illuminates the back of your subject. Some-times referred to as a rim light or hair light (if it’s focused specifically on a subject’s head) a backlight helps separate your subject from the background (see Figure 10.03). Of the three roles, the backlight is the most optional. While you’ll always need a key light, and usually want some kind of fill, there will be many times when you opt to shoot without a backlight. That doesn’t mean that backlighting isn’t pow-erful — there might be times when you choose to shoot with only backlighting.

Key lights can sometimes be confusing because it’s possible for them to do double duty as fill lights. We’ll see an example of this later.

In the examples discussed above, all three roles are being filled by continuous lights — LED light panels, to be specific — but specific roles do not require specific types of light. You can also freely mix lighting types amongst the different roles.

One note about the shots above: You might have noticed the small, bright highlights on the woman’s nose and forehead. These are reflections from the lights and they’re present because humans have shiny skin. Beginning lighting students will often try to solve the problem of shine by altering their lights, but it usually doesn’t work. To get rid of shine, your model needs to be powdered. Alternately, you can use various kinds of anti-shine — liquids, gels or powders that are rubbed onto the skin. For these images I wanted you to see the effects of pure lighting, so that you can see that shine is normal. Simple powder would remove the shine.

The Qualities of a LightAll light sources have certain qualities. Learning to think in terms of the following qualities will make it easier to identify and solve lighting problems.

Figure 10.03With the key and fill lights still in place, a backlight has been added to cast light onto her shoulders and hair. This serves to separate her from the background.

Figure 10.02Here she’s still being lit by the key light, but a fill light has been placed on the opposite side, at a roughly 45° angle to the model. It’s slightly less bright than the key, and fills in many of the shadows.

Figure 10.01This woman is being lit by a single light, placed at a roughly 45° angle to her face. It is the main, or key, source of light in the scene.

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• Intensity/brightness. Some lights are brighter than others. If your light source has a dimmer control, then you can dial the brightness of the light up and down. Putting a modifier on the light, such as a diffusion panel, will make the light dimmer. Finally, distance has a huge impact on light intensity. Obviously, a light that’s farther away is less intense. What’s less obvious is how quickly the light’s brightness drops as you move it farther away. When working with continuous lights or flashes, one of the easiest ways to get the light to be brighter or dimmer is simply to move it closer to and farther from your subject.

• Direction. If you’ve ever tried to terrify small children by placing a flashlight under your chin and pointing it straight up, then you have an interesting hobby and you already know the power of light direction. A light will cast very different shadows depending on what direction it’s coming from when it hits your subject, and changing the direction of a light is a very quick way to alter the mood of a scene.

• Color. You should already be quite familiar with white balance, and know that differ-ent types of light sources shine at different color temperatures. However, through the use of modifiers, lights can be intentionally colored, which is something you often see in stage and concert lighting. When you buy a light, whether strobe or continuous, you’ll want to learn its color temperature so that you can properly white balance your camera to get proper color.

• Relative size of the light source. The size of your light source, relative to your sub-ject, has a tremendous impact on the quality of the light striking your scene. A smaller light source will cast shadows with sharper edges, and create small, harsh highlights. A larger light source will cast shadows with broader, softer edges and will create diffuse highlights. It’s important to remember that we’re talking about the size relative to your subject, not the actual size of the source. The sun is an enormous light source, but it’s so far away that it’s very small, relative to your subject. Look outside on a cloudless day and you’ll see that shadows cast by the sun are hard-edged and distinct, and high-lights off of car bumpers are pinpoint and bright. A light source with a larger relative size will produce very different shadows and highlights. Making decisions about the size of your light source is one of the most important decisions you will make when lighting.

Lighting Role ExamplesRemember that the role of a light is determined by how you use it, not by the lighting tool itself. Any type of light or lighting aid can be used for any type of role. Consider the light source in Figure 10.04.

In this image light through a window is serving as a key light. I positioned the model to get the direction of light that I wanted. Also, sun is not directly striking the window. Rather, it’s bouncing off of other things outside first, which is softening it.

In the right image in Figure 10.05, I’m still using the window light as a key, but this time I’ve added an LED light panel as a fill light. You can see the actual set-up of my light, the window and the camera, in the left image in Figure 10.05.

Finally, in Figure 10.06, I’m using only the window light, but this time it’s serving as a backlight. However, you could also argue that it’s simultaneously serving as a key light, since it’s the main light on the subject.

Figure 10.04Here’s another example of a

solo key light, but this time the light source is simply a window

with sunlight shining through it.

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The important takeaway here is that, with simple changes in subject and camera posi-tion we have recast the window from key to backlight and achieved a dramatic change in the quality of the light and the feel of the resulting images. Another important thing to notice is that, by making use of the window, we only needed one actual lighting instru-ment — the light panel that we used as a fill. Remember: lights don’t fill a particular role by design, it’s up to you to decide how they’re used.

When you first approach a scene with an eye toward lighting, it can be difficult to know where to start, especially if you have a bag full of lighting gear. If you simply think “what should I use for a key light?” most other decisions can continue from there. Or, if there’s an obvious, nice lighting feature in your scene — such as good window light — you can begin by making a decision about how to use that feature. You may not stick with your original decision, but you’ll at least have a starting point. In fact, don’t stick with your original deci-sion. Move around your subject and look at how each light at your disposal changes as you move around. I originally thought of the window only as a key. If I hadn’t experimented, I wouldn’t have known that it made such a good backlight.

Also, if you choose to use any natural light source in a lighting role, be aware that its intensity will change over time. Depending on the time of day, it might change very quickly. If your shoot is going to take a while, using a natu-ral light source may not be a good idea.

MODIFYING A LIGHTLight modification is one of the most powerful creative tools at your disposal, and it’s rare that you’ll use a light without modifying it in some way. Light modifiers typi-cally fall into one of the following categories:

• Color modifiers. Some LED lights can electronically alter their color temperature so that they shine at different color temperatures. All lights, though, can be modified by placing colored gels in front of them — thin sheets of colored plastic, which can yield substantial changes in color.

• Intensity. Strobes and many continuous lights have controls that allow you to dial their intensity (brightness) up and down. You can also increase the intensity of a light by moving it closer to your subject. Finally, you can change the intensity of a light by placing certain types of physical modifiers in front of the light (see Figure 10.07).

Figure 10.06For this shot, the model didn’t move. Instead, I turned off the light panel and repositioned myself so that the window is behind her, creating this beautiful, moody backlighting. I didn’t have this planned — I found it by walking in a circle around her.

Figure 10.05In the image on the right, the window still serves as the key light, but now we’ve used an LED light panel to add a fill.My setup is shown on the left, where the light panel has been fitted with a diffuser, which softens the light.

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• Relative Size. This is perhaps the most powerful modification that you can make. As already discussed, a light that has a larger size, relative to your subject, produces a softer light. People speak of large, soft lights as “wrapping around” their subject, filling in all the shadows, which isn’t really true, though this is a good description of the look of such a light. You can increase the relative size of a light by moving it closer to your subject, or by placing a diffuser in front of the light (see Figure 10.07).

• Focus. A spotlight is a tightly focused light that illuminates a very specific, circular area. Some lights, both strobes and continuous lights, have built in mechanisms that let you change their focus. You can also alter a light’s focus by adding a physical mod-ifier to it, such as a snoot or barn doors (see Figure 10.08).

There are lots of lighting mod-ifiers out there, some designed for strobes, some designed for continu-ous lights, and there are even modi-fiers designed to fit the small pop-up flash on some digital cameras.

There are also lots of claims about many of these modifiers — you’ll see testimonials proclaiming that a par-ticular modifier makes it possible to easily light a scene like no other sys-tem. In general, any lighting modi-fier that you see is simply going to

do one of the things listed above. You’ll see more variations in diffusers than any other modifier, and you might like some modifiers better than others. Don’t be swayed, though, by claims that a particular modifier is going to solve all your lighting problems. A skilled user can get great results from any modifier. It’s hard to know what you need without some experience, so start with inexpensive, midsize modifiers and practice with those to learn the concepts we’re going to discuss.

TYPES OF LIGHTSThere are many types of lights out there. The good news is that you don’t have to learn about all of them. There are accomplished, acclaimed photographers who only work with natural light, while others get by working solely with strobes. And, of course, there’s a long history of studio photography using continuous (i.e. always on) lights. It is, of course, nice

Figure 10.07Diffusers (left) scatter light over a large surface, and thus soften

the light. A softbox (right) is a large diffuser that attaches to the front of a light. When

diffused, a light becomes less intense, so using a diffuser sometimes requires you to

increase the intensity of a light.

Figure 10.08Snoots and barn doors can be

fitted to continuous lights, large strobes and handheld flash

units. They let you direct and control the coverage of a light.

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to get some experience with each, just to learn your own preference, but if money, time, or interest is tight then delving into a single technology might be all you need. And as you might expect, it’s also possible to mix different lighting technologies, as needed.

ReflectorsI own a fair amount of lighting gear — both strobes and continuous lights — but by far the lighting tool I use the most is a simple reflector. Sometimes I use my own reflectors; at other times, I use reflectors that found on location. A reflector can be any flat surface that reflects light. White usually makes the best reflector surface, though you might sometimes use silver or gold to get either more light or a warmer light.

A reflector is sometimes referred to as a “bounce card” and this is a good way to think about what a reflector does — it simply bounces light into your scene. Figure 10.09 shows two images, the first shot without a reflector, the second shot with a reflector.

To return to the idea of lighting roles, in the first image we’re using the sun as a key light, which is also providing a tremendous amount of ambient light. In the second image we’re using the sun as a key light and the reflector as a fill light to “open” the shadows on the right side of his face.

Positioning a reflector is very simple: take note of where your light source is and then position the reflector to bounce light from that source onto your subject (see Figure 10.10).

The Cardinal Rule of Light Modification

Here’s a lighting question for you: suppose I have a handheld strobe light pointed at the ceiling above a portrait subject. What is the light source in my image? If you answered “the strobe,” you’re correct, in a technical sense. It is the strobe that is generating the actual photons of light, but from a photographic sense it is the ceiling that is your light source. When considering the effect that a light has on your scene you must consider the last surface that the light has struck, because every time light strikes a surface it gets modified. So, when you attach a large softbox to your strobe light, that softbox is effectively defining the relative size, color and intensity of your light.

In the above question, the ceiling is serving as a giant diffuser. As you bounce the light it gets spread across a large part of the surface of the ceiling. In other words, the size of the light source, relative to your subject, is greatly increased, and so the light becomes softer. If the ceiling is painted green, then the light will also pick up some of that color. So, it’s best to think of the ceiling as the light source, as it is modifying both the relative size, position, and color of the light. Those factors are what matter when thinking about lighting, not the actual origin of the light itself.

Figure 10.09The left image was shot with the model standing in direct sunlight. In the image on the right, he’s standing in the same place but a reflector has been used as a fill light.

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To the naked eye, the effect can be subtle, but if you move the reflector around and take it in and out of position while watching your subject, you should be able to see a big difference in illumination. If you don’t see any change, then you might not be properly catching the light or you might not be close enough. Remember, a light source increases in intensity as it gets closer to your subject and that rule holds true with reflectors also.

A reflector can deliver a tremendous amount of light to your scene. You should expect to be able to add one to two stops of light to your scene if you have a bright light source and a properly positioned reflector. That means you can use apertures that are one or two stops wider, or shutter speeds that are one or two stops faster than without the reflector.

Types of Reflectors

Any white, flat material will work as a reflector. Here are a few options.

• Cardboard/foamcore. Any piece of white cardboard, foamcore, poster board, or paper can be used as a reflector. Obviously, stiffer materials will be easier to manage than thin materials that can flap around. As we’ll see, even a small reflector can fill in a lot of light.

• Collapsible reflectors. There are lots of variations on collapsible reflectors. Some are circular, others are triangular and others come in even stranger shapes. Collapsible reflectors offer easy portability and multiple surfaces. For example, most circular col-lapsible reflectors provide a disk of diffusion material (we’ll talk more about this later) with a reversible cover that provides white, silver, black and gold surfaces.

• Found reflectors. Carrying lots of gear is a hassle, but you might be surprised how often you can find usable reflectors at a location — scrap paper, pillow cases or bed sheets or, most commonly, white walls. Position a subject next to a wall in a brightly lit area and you might find that you get a really nice fill effect from the bounce off of the wall. In dense urban areas you might find that the light that bounces down between tall skyscrapers often creates a beautiful, diffuse, even light that is ideal for portraits (see Figure 10.11). As a photographer, you should be on the lookout for great light. As you learn to pay attention to the quality of lighting, and practice decoding why it works, you’ll be better able to re-create your own effective lighting plots.

Figure 10.10This was where the reflector

was positioned to get the second shot in Figure 10.09.

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Using a Reflector

A reflector can mean the difference between a usable and unusable shot, but they’re hard to use without help. Depending on how you’re positioned relative to your subject, you might be able to hold a small or mid-size reflector while shooting, but a larger reflec-tor is going to require an assistant, as you saw in Figure 10.10. For a planned shoot, this usually isn’t a problem, but if you find yourself in an unplanned situation, you may not have any help with you. Con-sider asking a passer-by; everyone is a photographer these days, and even a total stranger might enjoy a little lighting lesson.

If you’re working in a studio, things are much eas-ier because you can use stands to hold reflectors, and, with the right equipment, you can precisely position a reflector without an assistant.

Most collapsible reflectors include a silver option. Silver reflectors push a lot more light into your scene than do white reflectors. The downside is that the light is harsher, often mottled, and almost always produces strong highlights. Silver reflectors can even be bright enough that they’ll cause your subject to squint. Silver reflectors are of little use close up, but they’re ideal for times when you’re shooting in shade and need more light. Send an assistant with a silver reflector out of the shade and back into the sunlight and, even with a small silver reflector, they should be able to get enough light into your scene to improve the shot, even from twenty or thirty yards.

Gold reflectors have the same overall quality as silver, but cast a very yellowish light onto your scene. Perhaps you might find a situation where Caucasian skin tone is improved by this light, but I’ve never found one. And non-Caucasian tones definitely don’t benefit from it.

Diffusers

Most collapsible reflectors come with a diffuser, and in many situations where you use a reflector, you’ll also probably want to have a diffuser. The easiest way to understand a diffuser is to think about the difference in the light on a sunny day versus a cloudy day. Clouds diffuse sunlight, creating an even, shadow-less light. You can think of a diffuser as a portable cloud that you can employ any time you’re working with a subject in bright

Figure 10.11This fantastic, soft portrait light is being created by sunlight bouncing off of a building outside, across the street. Keeping an eye out for this kind of lighting can yield a lot of great photo opportunities.

Figure 10.12A diffuser cuts the harsh light and shadow from the model’s face, while the bounce card that he’s holding puts a little controlled illumination back in.

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sunlight. In Figure 10.12, an assistant is holding a diffuser to shade the model, while the model himself is holding a small reflector out into the sun to bounce a little bit of fill light back onto his own face.

Continuous LightsThe ceiling light in your kitchen, the table lamp by your couch, the flashlight in your closet — these are all continuous lights. You can also just call them “lights” but we use the word continuous to distinguish them from strobes. (Technically, you can argue that strobes are also continuous lights, they’re just not continuous for very long.)

In terms of lighting design, there’s no difference between continuous lights and strobes. Both have the same qualities that we discussed earlier: they can both be used for any light-ing role, and they can both be modified. A big difference between continuous lights and strobes is that with continuous lights you can see the effects of your lighting changes as you make them. With strobes, you must take a shot and look at the results to see the effect of your lighting scheme. For this reason, continuous lights can be much easier to work with if you’re new to lighting.

The downsides to continuous lights are that they’re often less portable than strobes, and they may not run off of battery power. You can divide continuous lights into two categories:

• Hot lights. These are lights that employ older lighting technology like tungsten or halogen bulbs. They come in a fantastic array of designs, with a tremendous range of power/illumination. They also get very hot if you leave them on for a long time. This can cause your subject to sweat, which can affect their appearance, and can generally impact the comfort level on your set (in addition to burning through a lot of power). One of the great advantages of hot lights is that they are predictable and consistent in terms of their color characteristics. The color temperature of a hot light is determined by the bulb that you put in the light fixture.

• LED lights. If you’ve installed any LED lighting in your house then you probably know its advantages: LED lights are inexpensive and low power. What’s more, they come in a variety of colors. These days you can buy many different kinds of LED light-ing instruments from panels of LEDs to LED spotlights (see Figure 10.13).

While hot lights usually have a fixed temperature, determined by the type of bulb in the light, many LED lights offer variable color temperature, making it sim-ple to balance these lights with other light sources. For example, if you’ve got daylight coming in through a window, serving as a key light, you can use an LED dialed to the same color tem-perature as a fill light.

Continuous Light Considerations

When shopping for or planning a shoot with continuous lights, you’ll want to give some thought to the following.

• Power. How are you going to power your lights? Can they run off of batteries? If so, do you have enough batteries to run your lights for the duration of your shoot? You

Figure 10.13Both of these lights are LED

lights. They don’t get hot, are very low power and can be

easily run off of batteries.

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won’t find any battery-powered hot lights (you’ll need a generator if you want to go off-the-grid with such lights) but LED lights can often be run off of batteries. If you’ll be powering off of wall sockets, be sure to consider extension cords, power strips, and anything else you might need to get your lights plugged in.

• Stands. You’ll need light stands to hold your lights. Fortunately, you can get sturdy light stands in a vari-ety of heights and sizes for very reasonable prices at just about any camera store. Be sure to weigh your lights and choose a stand that can support that weight. If you’re traveling, then you may need to consider how big the stands are when collapsed.

Light stands all come with a standard mounting point. With some lights, such as the light panel shown on the left in Figure 10.13, the capability to tilt is built in to the light. Other lights, such as the small one shown on the right in Figure 10.13, don’t have any built-in movements. For those, you’ll need an additional mount, such as the one shown in Figure 10.14.

• Modifiers. We’ve already discussed modifiers, but they’re critical considerations when shopping for a light, or packing gear for a particular shoot. As you learn more about them, it will be more obvious what you need, but you still need to get in the habit of considering them when doing any lighting preparation.

StrobesStrobe is just another word for flash. A strobe light fires very brightly for a very brief period of time. Your camera might have a built-in strobe, or you might have a handheld strobe unit that can mount to the hot shoe on the top of the camera. Studio strobes are larger strobe lights that affix to stands and are powered by large power packs. The advantage of strobes is that they’re physically very small, but put out a huge amount of light.

Like continuous lights, strobes can be fitted with all sorts of modifiers and they can run off batteries. As you’ll see, in terms of exposure, using strobes is quite a bit more compli-cated than using continuous lights.

USING CONTINUOUS LIGHTSWhen you’re starting out with lighting, the best thing you can do is practice, and you can do that without any instruction. An inexpensive set of continuous lights, or even cheap work lights from the hardware store, is all you need to get started. Because bare continuous lights are almost always too harsh, you’ll need some kind of diffusion, and you’ll find that some continuous lights come with their own diffusion modifiers. If yours don’t then you can buy diffusion material at the hardware store, or simply use white bed sheets. Mount these on lighting stands between your light and your subject and you’ll get a softer light.

Here are some simple exercises to get you started. For each of these exercises you’ll set your lights and then meter your shot with your camera just as you always would. If you’re shooting a portrait you’ll want to keep your shutter speed no lower than 1/60th of a sec-ond, to freeze the subject in the frame, and this may require an ISO change. Experiment with aperture changes to observe the changes in depth of field. Finally, be very careful with white balance.

• One light as key. Put a subject — it can be a portrait subject or still life — against a simple background and shine a single light onto it. Frame up a composition, shoot it,

Figure 10.14The light stand on the left has been fitted with a tiltable mount sporting a cold shoe. In the image on the right, I’ve added an adapter that provides a quarter-inch screw mount.

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and then review the results. Shoot again without the diffusion, and then again with more diffusion, while paying attention to how shadows soften and light becomes more even. Move the light closer and shoot again, taking note of the increase in illu-mination — you should find that the light intensity changes rapidly as you move it forward and backward. Finally, shoot variations with the light in different places and take note of shadows. Shadows may not sound like any great surprise, but when you start paying attention to the way that a face casts shadows on itself, you may find that there’s a lot of light and shadow play there that you normally don’t notice.

• One light with a natural light. Perform similar experiments with your light and diffuser, but this time throw a window into the mix. Take note of what you can do with two lights. Experiment with using each source in the different lighting roles. Depending on the white balance of the light you’re using, this might be a mixed light-ing situation, which will likely require a manual white balance for accurate color.

• Three lights. Whether you use three continuous lights, or two lights and a natural light source, it’s time to experiment with using lights in all three roles — key, fill and back. What happens as you increase the intensity of one role? What kind of shadows can you create? Can you eliminate shadows completely? Can you create very soft light? Hard-edged light? In addition to lighting your subject, can you create plays of shadow in your scene?

USING STROBESMost beginning photographers (or photographers who are new to artificial lighting) assume that, when light levels get low, it’s time to use a flash. While it’s tempting to pop up your camera’s flash when shooting in the dark, you may have already noticed that when you do this, you produce images that have completely black backgrounds, and subjects that

have a harsh, “caught in the headlights” look (see Figure 10.15). As you’ll see, the surprising fact is that, in almost every case, a small handheld or built-in flash is far more useful in bright daylight than in very low light.

Learning to use any kind of strobe can be intimidating, but if you’ve ever taken a walk outside at night with a flashlight then you’ve already experienced every-thing you need to know to understand the fundamentals of flash photography.

The Basics of StrobesA capacitor is an electronic component that can store electricity. When you turn on a flash unit, or pop up the flash on

Good Lighting Takes Time and Practice

Controlling light is hard, even for experienced lighting pros. If you set up lights and your image doesn’t come out the way you expected, it’s easy to assume that you have no idea what you’re doing. Don’t worry, when lighting, it is completely normal to have to adjust lights, add more, remove others, and it’s normal to introduce unexpected problems along the way — a surprising shadow here, a bright highlight there. Good lighting takes iteration, so don’t give up: keep playing with it and adjusting until it’s what you want.

Figure 10.15The camera is exposing for the

area lit by the flash, but the flash has very limited range.

Everything outside of the flash area is underexposed,

resulting in a featureless black void behind the subject.

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your camera, capacitors in the flash are filled with electricity. This is not an instant process, which is why you can’t always shoot flash photos in quick succession. When charging, some flash units make a high-pitched whining noise while the capacitors are charging.

In the flash head are very tiny, very sophisticated light bulbs. When the flash is fired, all of its stored electricity is channeled into the head, and the light bulbs are turned on. A flash unit can only fire at one level of intensity, but the duration of that firing can be controlled. So, while we think of a strobe as a “flash” of light, the fact is that it’s really a continuous light, but one that’s not turned on for very long. Through controls on your camera, you can dial the brightness of the flash up and down, but what you’re actually doing is telling the flash unit to leave its light on for more or less time.

Getting back to walking in the woods at night with a flashlight … that light creates a pool of light that’s much brighter than the ambient light. Your eyes adjust to the brightness level created by the flashlight allowing you to easily see what’s inside that pool of light. Out-side the pool, though, you can’t see anything because the irises in your eyes will be closed down to see inside the area covered by the flashlight. (While it’s often tempting to turn on a flashlight when walking in the dark, you might find that you can see more if you leave the light off and let your eyes adjust to the darkness — the human eye is very good in low light.)

All lights have a range. If you’ve been playing with some continuous lighting then you’ve probably seen how quickly the brightness of a light drops off as you move it farther from your subject. At night, it’s very easy to see the range of a flashlight: it’s that well-defined, soft-edged pool of light in front of you. Your flash also creates a pool of light, but because it’s only on for a fraction of a second, you can’t easily see how much of your scene the flash is illuminating.

At some point you’ve probably taken a flash picture of a person at night and gotten the type of image you saw in Figure 10.15 — an illuminated subject on completely black background. This is the exact same situation as the “walking with a flashlight” scenario. The flash has thrown out a bright pool of illumination and the camera has chosen expo-sure settings for that bright area. Because the light outside of the flash range — the ambient light — is so much lower than the flash’s pool of light, everything outside of the flash cov-erage is underexposed. When you’re the subject of a photo, and the flash is firing into your eyes, it feels like a lot of light, but the built-in flash on most cameras is fairly low power — it only has a range of ten to twelve feet.

The critical thing to understand about flash photography is that you have to think of every single flash photo as having two exposures — one for the flash, and one for outside the flash.

Flash and Your Camera ShutterIn Chapter 6, you read that the shutter in your camera is composed of two curtains. When you press the shutter button, the first curtain opens and then the second one begins to close. This two-curtain system makes very fast shutter speeds possible because the second curtain can begin clos-ing before the first one is through opening. At a slower shutter speed, say 1/60th of a second, the first curtain will open completely, exposing the entire sensor before the sec-ond curtain begins to close. But at faster speeds, the second curtain will start to move before the first curtain has com-pletely opened. In other words, at faster speeds, these two curtains move at the same time, creating a slit opening that passes over the sensor, exposing it to light. Your flash fires with a much shorter duration than even the fastest shutter speed. If you fire a flash when only a thin strip of the sen-sor is exposed by the shutter, then only that thin strip will

Figure 10.16If you shoot with a shutter speed that’s faster than your camera’s specified flash sync speed, then your flash will be unable to evenly illuminate your frame.

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be illuminated by the flash. Figure 10.16 shows an example of what can happen when the shutter speed is too fast for good flash exposure.

All cameras with dual-curtain shutters have a specified “flash sync speed” which is the fastest speed that they can shoot with when using flash. Depending on your camera, this will vary from 1/125th to 1/250th of a second. Note that, when using flash, your camera will still work at faster shutter speeds, but you’ll end up with results like those shown in Figure 10.16.

A very few cameras offer leaf shutters (which we mentioned briefly in Chapter 6, on page 72). This is a shutter mechanism that is kept within the camera lens, rather than in the body. One advantage of leaf shutters is that they can sync at any flash speed. Consider a situation where you want to use flash in bright daylight, but you want a wide aperture for shallow depth of field. That wide aperture will require you to use a faster shutter speed, to cut some of the bright sunlight being let in by the wide aperture. With a leaf shutter you’ll have no trouble in this situation. With a camera that has a curtain shutter, you might not be able to use a shutter speed that is fast enough to compensate for your wide aperture. (I say “might not be able” because there is a way around this problem, which we’ll see later.)

Flash ExposureEarlier I mentioned that a flash photo contains two different exposures. To understand what that means, you can do some simple experimenting with your camera in Manual mode. Let’s say you’re shooting a portrait of someone at night, outside. You could use a long exposure, of course, and get plenty of illumi-nation, but it’s difficult for a sub-ject to hold still for longer than a fraction of a second. A flash, though, will freeze their motion, which solves that problem, but flashes have a limited range. The exposure that’s correct for the bright area of your flash won’t be correct for everything outside of the flash range.

Your first step is to figure out exposure settings that will prop-erly expose everything outside of the flash coverage. Another way to think of it is that we’re going to find good exposure for the ambi-ent light in the scene. In Figure 10.17, I’ve done that. With my model in place, I tried a few expo-sures until the background was a level of brightness that I liked.

I found that, at ISO 800, a shutter speed of 1/15th of a sec-ond, at f/4 gave me a pleasing

Figure 10.17I begin my flash process

by determining a pleasing exposure for the background,

just as I normally would. By “pleasing” I simply mean a

level of brightness that I like.

Next, I fired the flash into my scene. Note that the

background is identical to the top image; its exposure

has not altered. The area illuminated by the flash is essentially a different

exposure within the frame.

After adjusting my flash power I have a good level of

illumination on my model. Note that the background

exposure has stayed the same.

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exposure on the background (top image in Figure 10.17). Obviously, these settings were too dark to expose the model, and the shutter speed was too slow to freeze her motion.

If I fire the flash into my scene, at full power, I get the result shown in the middle of that group. Note that the background hasn’t changed from the previous image because my exposure settings haven’t changed. Looking at the shot, I obviously have too much flash, so I need to adjust it.

There are several ways to control the brightness of the flash. In this case, I lowered the flash power. The bottom image in Figure 10.17 shows the same scene with the same expo-sure settings, but I’ve dimmed the flash.

Again, the background hasn’t changed — the ambient exposure remains correct, and by altering the flash I was able to arrive at a flash level suitable for the model. (And if you hav-en’t noticed already, as far as lighting roles go, in this shot I have only a key light. The bright lights of the city aren’t functioning as a backlight because they’re not actually throwing any illumination onto the model.)

My camera has a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second. This is pretty typical for a pro-level SLR or mirrorless camera, and it’s a speed that is capable of stopping the fastest athlete, vehicle or animal that you might want to shoot. Let’s set aside the question of sync for the moment, and note that even if my camera could sync its shutter with the flash at 1/8000th of a second, that shutter speed is still dramatically slower than the duration of the flash. The full power of the flash will still be captured by even the fastest shutter speed your camera can muster. In other words, shutter speed has no impact on the brightness of the area in your scene that is illuminated by the flash because the flash can always shine its full power through any shutter speed you choose.

Controlling the Brightness of the Flash

Everything you already know about exposure applies to the area of your scene that is illuminated by the flash. However, as you’ve seen, shutter speed has no effect on the flash-illuminated area, and you have the additional parameter of flash power to work with. Here are the parameters you can change to control the brightness of a flash:

• Flash power. Adjusting the flash power changes the amount of flash illumination in your scene but has no impact on the area outside of the flash range.

• Aperture. Closing down your camera’s aperture during a flash exposure will dim your flash, but it will also dim the ambient light in the scene. You can compensate for the dimmer ambient light by going to a longer shutter speed. Remember, shutter speed has no impact on flash brightness.

• ISO. Increase the ISO and everything in your scene will get brighter and possibly nois-ier. Lower the ISO and the opposite will happen.

• Distance to the subject. This is the least technical control at your disposal, but some-times the most effective. If you’re not getting enough flash onto your subject, move the flash unit closer (assuming you’re using an external flash).

Again, think of the ambient light — the area outside of the flash coverage — as its own exposure. You can freely adjust all three exposure controls to alter the brightness of that area outside the flash range. When you change aperture or ISO, you’ll also affect the bright-ness of the area covered by the flash. You can compensate for that by changing flash power and, if you have an external flash, the flash position.

What we’ve looked at here is a manual process for determining exposure when using flash. We start by finding good exposure settings for the background, then add in the flash and adjust settings until the flash area looks good. Needless to say, that process can take some time. Fortunately, your camera’s flash system probably has some automatic features that will take care of all this calculation for you. Still, it’s worth knowing how to do this

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manually both for the technical understanding and because sometimes automatic flash fea-tures don’t work so well, especially if you’re using multiple flash units.

Before we get to those auto features, though, we need to talk about different types of flash units.

Built-In FlashYour camera might have a built-in flash that either pops up or is housed inside the camera’s body. Built-in flashes have less power, and therefore shorter range, than external flashes, and they can’t be moved off of the camera.

As you’ve already learned, direction of light is a very important consideration when placing a light. An on-camera flash will always be directly in front of your subject, but the human visual system evolved to expect light to come from above. For this reason, a light shining directly into someone’s face looks unusual to us and is rarely attractive or flattering. That doesn’t mean that built-in flash isn’t useful, but it might not serve the purpose that you think it does. Because of its position on the camera, the best use for your camera’s built-in flash is not in low light, but in bright light, when you need some fill light to balance a bright key light, like the sun.

Figure 10.18 is a prime example of what built-in camera flash is ideal for. In the first image (on the left), the direct sunlight is casting a harsh shadow on the side of my subject’s face. In other words, the sun is acting like a strong key light. My flash can serve as a fill light to open up the dark shadows (right).

Figure 10.19 is another good flash situation. We were both standing under an awning so he doesn’t have harsh sunlight on him. However, the background is so bright that the camera has underexposed his face. By firing the flash, I even out the exposure overall.

Thinking of it in terms of roles, my flash is acting as the key light, and the sun is acting as a backlight (as well as filling the entire scene with ambient light). Note the nice highlights on his hair and shoulders.

External FlashAny flash or strobe that is not built into your camera is an external flash. This means any-thing from a handheld unit, which can be mounted to your camera, to large strobes that mount atop light stands. All of the examples in the last section could also have been achieved with an external flash, and externals have a couple of advantages over internal flashes. They can pack a lot more power, which allows you to cover a wider area with light, and they can be moved. Because you can change their direction, external flashes can also be bounced. Previously, we discussed that the last surface a light interacts with determines its effective size, relative to your subject. Being able to point your flash means you can do things like bounce it off of a ceiling, wall, or fill card, thus creating a huge, diffuse light source.

Figure 10.18In the first image (left), the

harsh sun is casting dark shadows. In the image

on the right, the camera’s flash has served to fill in

the shadows created by the bright key light of the sun.

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Connecting an External Flash

Most SLR and mirrorless cameras provide a hot shoe for attaching an external flash. This is a standardized mount that you can slide the foot of your flash unit into. It’s called a hot shoe because it has electrical contacts that allow the camera to communicate with the flash. You might also find cold shoes, which can be attached to light stands and simply provide a way to hold the flash.

You can also get extension cords that attach to the camera’s hot shoe and provide a hot shoe at the other end, letting you move the flash off of the camera. Special flash brackets can be used to hold both the camera and a flash, like the one shown in Figure 10.20. Even moving the flash this short distance can create a more natural light.

Such cables are usually expensive and not always very long. If your camera provides a flash sync port, then you can use a standard flash sync cable to connect an external flash. However, as you’ll see, such a cord won’t enable all of the automatic flash features that your camera provides.

Finally, you can also connect a flash wirelessly through the use of special wireless mod-ules. Attach a transmitter to your camera’s hot shoe and a receiver to your flash and you should be able to remotely control your flash, even if there are obstacles in the way. But as with cords, depending on the wireless system you’re using, you may or may not get all of the automatic features of your flash. (Some cameras have wireless modules built-in, allowing the use of compatible external flashes without requiring an separate transmitter.)

Communicating With The FlashMost SLR and mirrorless camera manufacturers make flash units that are designed to work with their cameras. With these flash systems, through-the-lens (TTL) metering informa-tion is gathered from the camera and combined with data collected by the flash. The result is then used to calculate both flash power and exposure settings for your camera.

Camera vendors like to give these systems brand names and if your camera maker has been around for a while, they might have several different systems. For example, Nikon has had flash protocols named

Figure 10.19Because we’re standing in the shade of an awning, this scene is a troublesome backlight situation. The flash brightens the foreground and evens out the exposure overall.

Figure 10.20Off-camera flash brackets enable you to get your flash away from your camera and into a position that will allow you to reduce annoying shadows behind your subject. If you don’t have a bracket, you can use an off-camera cable and simply hold the flash in a better position.

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TTL, D-TTL, and iTTL. When shopping for a flash, it’s important to take note of whether it uses a flash protocol that your camera understands.

Most flashes can also be put into a fully manual mode, which leaves the control of flash power up to you. Any flash with a manual mode will work on any camera, but you’ll only be able to control the flash manually. If you want automatic metering, you have to choose a flash with a compatible protocol. If you’re buying wireless flash triggers then it’s important to investigate whether they can transmit your camera’s flash protocol. If they can’t then you’ll only have manual control of the flash. Similarly, hot-shoe extension cords must be wired correctly to support your camera’s protocol, while flash sync cables will only ever allow manual flash control.

How Automatic Flash Modes WorkAs you’ve learned, when you half-press the shutter button, your camera does a lot of things. If you have the internal flash activated, or if you’ve attached an external flash and set it for auto mode, then the camera’s normal exposure metering process is altered.

If you’re in fully automatic mode, most cameras will pop up their built-in flash, if there is one, when it thinks the flash is necessary. Similarly, if an external flash is attached and powered on, a camera in Auto mode will make the decision as to whether or not the flash should be fired. In all other modes you’ll decide whether the flash should be used.

Let’s consider what happens when you shoot with a flash set to auto mode, but your camera in Program mode. When the shutter button is half-pressed, the camera will cal-culate the shutter speed, aperture and ISO it will use (if Auto ISO is set) and these settings will properly expose the ambient light in your scene, without going beyond the flash’s sync speed. At this point, the camera knows nothing about how long it’s going to fire the flash for. That doesn’t happen until you press the shutter.

When you fully press the shutter, the camera quickly fires some low-power flash bursts. This light bounces off your scene, and is measured by your camera. From this data, the camera and flash calculate how much flash power is needed to properly expose your scene. Immediately after, the shutter is opened, the flash is turned on and, after the calculated duration, the flash is shut down. Finally, after the appropriate duration, the shutter is closed and your shot is complete. This automatic flash metering isn’t instantaneous. You probably won’t notice any extra flashing, but it might feel like there’s a very slight lag before the camera takes the shot.

Now you see why such a flash system is called TTL — the system measures the flash exposure through the lens, which makes for great accuracy. Whether you’re bouncing the flash off of a ceiling, pointing it directly at your subject, or shining it through a softbox, the camera will measure the light that’s coming back to the sensor, so any flash modifications are accounted for.

If you leave Program mode, you might need to pay a little more attention to shutter speed. When using a flash in Shutter Priority mode, you’ll be able to choose any shutter speed you want, even if it’s beyond the camera’s flash sync speed. It’s up to you to know what your camera’s sync speed is and to understand that if you go past it you’ll get bad results. If your camera has a shutter speed dial, it might mark the flash sync speed on the dial, usually with an X (see Figure 10.21).

Why Does My Flash Recharge Time Vary?

Because the flash doesn’t always fire at full power it doesn’t always use all the power that it has stored in its capacitors. That means that, after a shot, it may not have to recharge at all before it’s ready to fire again. If it does need to recharge, it may not need a full cycle.

Figure 10.21If your camera has a

shutter speed dial, it will likely have the flash sync speed marked with an X.

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In Aperture Priority mode on most cameras, the camera will not choose a shutter speed beyond the flash sync speed, even if its meter thinks it needs one. For example, if you choose an aperture and your light meter thinks a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second is necessary, but your flash sync speed is 1/250th, then the camera will choose 1/250th. To let you know that this choice isn’t ideal, the camera will give some indication — usually either by flashing the shutter speed in the display, or by changing the shutter speed’s color. In the resulting image, the areas of the image outside of the flash coverage will be underexposed.

Flash Exposure Compensation

Whether you’re working with a built-in flash or an external flash, your camera will provide a feature called flash exposure compensation, which lets you alter the brightness of your flash in fractions of a stop — just as standard exposure compensation lets you alter exposure value. If you’re using an external unit, flash exposure compensation will only work if the flash uses your camera’s native flash protocol.

With flash exposure compensation, you dial in positive or negative adjustments in frac-tional-stop increments. (Most external flash units also let you adjust flash exposure com-pensation using a control on the flash itself.) When you shoot, the flash will go through the process of calculating what it thinks is the correct amount of light to add to your scene, and then will adjust that amount by your specified flash exposure compensation. I find the

automatic flash mechanisms on some cameras to be too aggressive — they choose too much flash power — so I will set their flash exposure compensation to as much as -1 stop (see Fig-ure 10.22). This is an easy control to experiment with and it’s worth spending a little time practicing with it and your flash before you do any serious flash work.

Using Automatic FlashWhen your automatic flash system works well, using it is a very simple process: activate the flash, frame your shot and take the photo. In the resulting image, if the flash is too bright or too dark, use the flash exposure compensation control to alter the flash power and try your shot again.

If you’re shooting subjects with automatic flash in extremely low light, then you’ll almost always end up with results that have completely black backgrounds. This is because the automatic features on your camera will try to protect you from camera shake. In other words, they won’t ever choose a shutter speed below 1/30th of a second. At that speed, the ambient light in a dark scene will almost always be underexposed. To address this problem, most cameras provide a Night Portrait mode.

Figure 10.22The image on the left shows the camera’s default flash illumination which is plainly too bright. With some negative flash exposure compensation (right), I can easily get the flash under control.

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Using Night Portrait Mode when Shooting With Flash in Low LightIn Chapter 2, we talked about Night Portrait mode, but now you should have an under-standing of how it works. In Night Portrait mode the camera will fire its flash to illuminate your subject, and will choose a long shutter speed to properly expose the ambient light in your scene — that is, the light that falls outside of the pool of light created by the flash.

Night Portrait mode is a variation of Program mode, but in it your shutter speeds can go very slow, sometimes down to several seconds. Consequently, it’s very important to hold your camera steady when using these modes, and to tell your subject to not move until you lower the camera. The flash will freeze your subject, so even with a little movement, they should still appear sharp in the final image.

Many Night Portrait modes don’t allow you to shoot raw files — they’re JPEG only. For-tunately, there’s an easy workaround: slow sync shutter.

Slow Sync Shutter: More Low-Light ControlThe “long shutter speed plus flash” trick that Night Portrait modes use has another name: slow sync shutter. If you want to shoot in raw format, or if your camera doesn’t offer a spe-cial Night Portrait mode, you can still get good flash results in very low light by configuring your camera for slow sync shutter.

To shoot with a slow sync shutter:

1. Put your camera in Manual mode.2. Turn off your flash. If it’s a pop-up flash, simply push it down. If it’s an external flash,

turn it off.3. Meter your scene and choose a shutter speed and aperture that yield a good exposure.

If it’s very dark out, this might be a very long shutter speed. Obviously, you can adjust ISO as well.

4. Activate your flash and take the shot.

As in Night Portrait mode, your camera will fire the flash to expose your subject, while the exposure settings that you chose will properly expose the area outside of the flash range. If you feel the flash is too bright, or not bright enough, you can use flash exposure com-pensation to change the flash power. If you’re using your flash in manual mode, adjust the flash power as needed.

Slow Sync Flash and Motion

Since flash duration is so much faster than shutter speed, an interesting question arises: should the flash fire as soon as the shutter opens, just before it closes, or some time in the middle? Your camera possibly has some options that let you control this.

In your menu system you might find something called “Shutter Curtain Sync” or “Rear Sync.” It should provide two options, first curtain and second curtain. These let you specify whether the flash will fire immediately after the shutter opens all the way, or just before it closes. This is an important consideration if you’re shooting with your flash at night and your subject is moving. Remember, the flash will freeze the motion in your scene, but the long exposure will still capture some motion blur. By choosing a specific curtain you can control whether your subject will be frozen at the beginning of their motion or at the end (see Figure 10.23)

Needless to say, this is not a feature you will likely use very often, but exploring how it works can help you understand the interaction between shutter and flash.

Manual Flash ControlWhile flash exposure compensation provides you with a way to adjust the brightness of your flash, you won’t be able to use it with a flash that isn’t compatible with your camera’s automatic flash system. All flashes offer fully manual controls, and in some circumstances

Chapter 10: Lighting 185

you may find that manual controls are preferable to your camera’s automatic flash control. For example:

• If you’re using modifiers or there is some other cir-cumstance that is causing your automatic flash mech-anism to produce bad results, you’ll want to switch to manual flash control.

• In some situations, you might find that your camera’s automatic flash controls aren’t consistent. That is, even with nothing in your scene changing, the flash system produces different results from shot to shot. Manual control will fix this.

• Most of the flash systems sold by camera manufactur-ers are very expensive, but you can buy inexpensive, third-party, all-manual flash units. Or, perhaps you’re a Nikon shooter but you have a friend with Canon flash units. While your Nikon camera can’t use any of the Canon flash’s automatic features, you can place the flash in manual mode and have full control of it.

• Sometimes, when using multiple flashes simultane-ously, you might prefer working with manual flashes.

If your flash unit has automatic features then it proba-bly has some sort of mode selection control which lets you choose between different levels of automatic control, or fully manual mode. If you have an all manual flash, then it’s always in manual mode.

By default, a manual flash will fire at full power, which is usually represented on the flash as 1/1. Somewhere will be a control that lets you dial the power down. With each change you’ll cut the flash power in half, or one stop. So you’ll see the flash power change from 1/1 to 1/2 to 1/4 to 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 and usually stopping at 1/128.

To choose a flash power, simply work by trial and error. Find the ambient exposure settings that you like, just as you did with automatic flash, then shoot with your flash. If the flash power is too strong, it will be obvious, so dial it down and try again. It may take several test shots to get the flash power set correctly.

Manual Flash Control With A Light Meter

Though not necessary, a handheld light meter makes working with manual flashes much easier because it obviates the need for bunches of test shots. To use a light meter with a manual flash:

• Configure the meter with the ISO and shutter speed you’re using on your camera.

• Place the meter in your scene and trigger your flashes. The meter will read the light and tell you what aperture you should use to get a good exposure.

• Set your camera to the meter’s recommended aperture and take your shot. If you’d rather use a different aperture then adjust the lights accordingly — for a smaller aper-ture, turn up the flash power, for a bigger aperture, turn down the flash power.

Light meters vary in price, with some offering features like the ability to wirelessly alter flash power from the meter itself. If you’re just getting started with manual flash, it’s prob-ably not worth investing in a light meter; you’ll learn more initially through trial and error. If you find yourself doing a lot of flash work, then a cheap meter will serve you well.

Figure 10.23In the first image, the flash fired near the end of the exposure, freezing the unicyclist. The motion blur resulted from the long shutter speed. In the second image, the flash fired near the beginning of the exposure.

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Multiple StrobesAs you may have noticed, throughout this discussion of strobes, there have been some familiar terms, specifically “key light” and “fill light.” Even though flash technology is very different than continuous light technology and requires you to think about exposure a little bit differently, when it comes to lighting design you can still fall back on the simple ques-tion of “what role does this light play in my scene?” As with continuous lights, strobes can serve as key lights, fills, backlights, or combinations. They can also work in concert with other types of lights in other roles. What makes working with multiple strobes a little bit tricky is the process of controlling them.

On modern flash systems, all automatic features such as TTL metering should still work when using multiple flashes. The camera and each flash unit can communicate with each other to work out exposures and flash power. Some flashes use infrared light for inter-flash communication which can work very well though it does require line-of-sight between each unit. A few flash systems provide radio communication from flash to flash, and as mentioned earlier there are radio remote controls that you can attach your flash to. If your control is compatible with your flash system, then you will still get automatic metering.

As discussed earlier, you want the key light in your scene to be brighter than the fill light. If you’re using strobes for the key and fill then they’ll need to be set to different power settings, or “ratioed.” When working with multiple flash units, many automatic flash modes provide dedicated controls for ratioing. For example, you might have a control that lets you specify that flash unit A and B have a 1:2 ratio, meaning that flash unit B will be twice as bright. Some flash systems even provide controls for ratioing groups of flashes.

You can also, of course, work completely manually, setting the power of each flash by hand. This can be complicated if your flashes are mounted high up on light stands, but if you don’t have workable remote control, or don’t feel that your automatic system is deliv-ering consistent results, then this is a fine way to work.

High-Speed Sync FlashFinally, we come to one of the most unusual uses of flash: dimming the ambient light in your scene. Yes, while we usually think of a flash as a device for adding light, you can use the right combination of gear to effectively dim background light. With a strong enough flash you can even reduce full sunlight.

We’ve discussed sync speed at length, so you should already understand why a two-cur-tain shutter doesn’t allow the use of every shutter speed when shooting with a flash. Some automatic flash systems offer special high-speed sync modes, which allow you to synchro-nize the flash at shutter speeds higher than the normal sync speed. Remember, at higher shutter speeds, the shutter in your camera is effectively a thin slit that travels across the face of the camera’s image sensor. In high-speed sync mode, the flash fires multiple times

as that slit moves, to evenly cover the whole frame with flash illumination.

If your flash system offers high-speed sync for your cam-era (your manual will tell you) then you might be able to use any shutter speed when work-ing with flash. By now you should be comfortable with the idea that, when shooting with flash, you first need to fig-ure out the correct exposure for the ambient light in your

Figure 10.24I used a fast shutter speed to underexpose the background

in this shot, reducing the bright sunlight in the background.

A flash in high-speed sync mode was able to sync with

the fast shutter speed and illuminate my subject.

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scene — that is, the light outside of the flash range. In bright light, a normal sync speed of 1/250th of a second might not be fast enough to underexpose the ambient light. But when you can crank up to 1/8000th, things change.

Consider Figure 10.24. For the portrait on this bright, sunny day, I set the shutter speed to 1/2000th of a second, and the aperture to f/4. If you take your own camera outside in bright sunlight and set it to those same parameters, you’ll get an idea for how underexposed the background is in this shot. Meanwhile, the foreground is illuminated by the flash.

So why not stay in high-speed sync mode all the time? Because the ability to sync at high speed comes at a cost of flash power. When working in high-speed sync mode your flash won’t be able to output as much overall illumination.

For the flower example in Figure 10.25, I attached a small softbox to soften the light of a handheld strobe, but it also cut brightness. I had to get the flash very close to the flower before I could get enough light onto it. For the portrait, I was not using a handheld flash, but a large, powerful studio strobe. Even with all that power, I still had to position the strobe a mere three or four feet from the subject.

AVOIDING COMMON LIGHTING MISTAKESWe’ve covered a lot of theory and a lot of technology in this chapter and that’s because lighting is a big subject. As you may have suspected, we’ve only scratched the surface. We have not talked at length about modifiers, different standard styles of portrait lighting, the complexities of product or food lighting, and so on. However, essential to all of those topics is the concept of lighting roles, which you’ve now had some practice at.

After years of watching students I would say that if you’re starting out with lighting, these are the main pitfalls to be aware of:

• Learning recipes for lighting — “When shooting a portrait, put this light here and that light there and you’re ready to go!” — is not a good way to learn. Think instead about identifying key, back, and fill. Think about these roles when examining the light in a scene and when looking at other photos and video.

• Learn to recognize shadows. We’re not always aware of how many shadows might be falling onto someone’s face. Sometimes, it’s only when you see the final image that you realize that a subject’s eye sockets are deep with shadow. Learn to see shadows while shooting, and to hide them through the use of diffusers.

• Reflectors are more powerful than you think. It’s easy to get excited — or intim-idated — by the idea that you need fancy lighting gear, when you might need nothing more than a piece of white cardboard. Even a small bounce card or reflector can move a tremendous amount of light. Don’t buy any lighting gear until you’ve practiced with reflectors for a while and learned how much light you can control with them.

• You don’t have to get it right the first time. I said this earlier, but it’s worth repeat-ing: lighting design requires trial and error. Don’t be intimidated by initial bad results.

Photography begins with light. Even if you choose to only work with available or nat-ural light, learning to think like a lighting designer will help you recognize more photo-graphic scenes and lead you to compose more interesting photos as you work those scenes.

Figure 10.25I fitted a small softbox to a handheld strobe with high-speed sync capability to capture these flowers.However, I had to position the flash extremely close to them to get enough light for a good exposure.

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