Direct Flash vs Bounced Flash

I am often asked by people how they can improve their photography or which camera they should buy to take better photographs. My advice is always the same, if you already have a dslr then you don't need a "better" camera or lens. There are many skills you can learn to improve your photography, some complicated, but most as simple as riding a bicycle.

One of the simplest ways to improve a photograph is to learn how to use light properly and there are several simple techniques with an on camera flash that will step up your game and produce much better quality photos. For instance, I am always amazed by how something as simple as bouncing a flash off a wall can improve a photograph by 100%.

Mixed Light Sources - Window Light with Speedlight for a Quick Portrait

Recently I took the above portrait in the lounge of a private home. I used a blank white wall as a plain background, light from the open window provided the strong side light and background light, and a camera mounted sb700 pointed into the corner of the ceiling and wall behind me provided the main light. All in all it worked out quite well for a "high key" type portrait.

I shot this with my now favourite portrait lens, the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G on the D300s.

Three Light Product Photography Tutorial

Today I have a quick and simple "how to" on putting together a nice slightly low key product shot with three lights. Here is the final result and then I will go through the steps on how to build the lighting to get this photograph:

How to Enlarge Your Lightsource for Softer Light, easily.

I did a little experiment this evening just to demonstrate how to make a really large lightsource and give much more even light on your subject than just blasting away with direct light.

I have two 65x65cm light boxes that are quite handy. So here is a pic of them set up pointing directly at a nice Dutch vase. The camera was on the tripod in front of the table.

From here it looks like that should make for some pretty good light on the vase, but as we can see in the next photo they also leave some not so great specular highlights on the vase and two distinct shadow areas behind the vase.

Not a bad photograph as such, but we can do much better than that! So, in order to increase the overall size of the light source I simply faced the lights up at the ceiling. Of course I also had to increase the power output of the lights because the light now had much further to travel and the inverse square law robs us of light very quickly when we increase the distance the light has to travel.

As you can see from the pic above the light has now been spread over a much larger area. So what has that done for our lovely Dutch vase?

Well the first thing you notice is that the ugly specular highlights have vanished and the light is much more evenly spread on the vase itself. The second thing is that the shadows behind the vase have also disappeared. Overall a much more pleasing result!

If all you have are two speedlights instead of the bigger studio lights then don't be disheartened because the exact same principle still holds true and will work just great. Simply pump up the power a bit and let 'er rip, it will have a similar wonderful softening effect on the quality of light.

Happy product photographing folks!

The Power of Bounced Flash!

Nikon sb600 atop my D300s turned backwards and about 45° upwards to bounce onto the wall and ceiling behind me. This simple technique resulted in even and soft lighting from a large light source and great highlights in the eyes of the subjects!