Question for wedding photographers

[TRSmith]

Do you ever use your flash off camera? Specifically, do any of you ever attach the flash via an extension cable and hold it in the hand not operating the camera? I think it might be a bit awkward (and tiring) but I'm curious. Is it simply more comfortable to leave the flash attached to the hot shoe and figure clever ways to bounce it?

Thanks!
Tim

p.s. I'm asking Wedding shooters only because it seems likely this group will be using flash regularly, but anyone who's used a flash consistently is free to chime in.

 

[glenerrolrd]

There seem to be four ways that most wedding photographers handle their flash. Each with advantages and disadvantages.

1. On the camera with a mini softbox or diffuser. (see Gary Fong s website for some short videos ).

2. Using a bracket that places the flash above the lens. (see really right stuff for an example). You will get a lot of debate about the perfect bracket.

3. Off the camera attached to a flash cord (like in the Nikon Sc-29). This style is explained on Sean Reid s site.

4. Completely off the camera with the flash triggered by a Pocket Wizard or a synch flash from the camera. This requirers an assistant or a ability to securely mount the flash on a stand or other fixture.

This is a timely topic for me as I will be shooting a wedding in two weeks (after a few years off working....so the technology is way better than I had). I did a warm up shoot last weekend at my sisters son s wedding and used the RRS bracket and a Gary Fong Lightsphere on a SB-900. Which I thought worked great with a D3.

The advantage for me of the RRS bracket is that its light and it folds up to a very small form. The biggest challenge I had was finding the right balance between the ambient light and the flash. With strong and consistent ambient light ..its quite simple...and can be done using "Aperture Preferred" after setting the ISO to keep the shutter speed at 1/125. With darker environments ...I had to go manual with 1/60 and let the backgrounds go darker.

I am a rookie using flash but a decent current book is "The Hot Shoe Diaries" by Joe McNally.

Roger


I would be interested in hearing what others think on this as well.

 

[TRSmith]

Thanks for your reply Roger. That pretty much sums up what I have gleaned from various sources as well. And I also have the Joe McNally book.

I don't have any plans to shoot a wedding, but I am curious about using additional light while still being portable/mobile. I've done a few things with macro and my SB-800 on an extension cord that I liked. People are a different sort of challenge though. My guess is that having the flash attached to the camera in some form would be easier when shooting for hours at a time. But still wonder if there are situations where off-axis, hand-held flash might work.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[glenerrolrd]

Tim

I have similar thoughts. My daughter shoots events and we settled on a Canon 5D with a 580 flash using the Gary Fong Lightsphere. Its not off the camera(which is better) but with the diffuser it softens the light. The portability wins out over the perfection possible with a bracket.

I tend to (1) get pretty close to my subjects (because I work on street shooting..so its inside 12 ft ) and (2) like to balance the ambient light with the flash whenever it makes sense. To do this the flash doesn t have to be all that big and I can lose a lot of power going thru a larger diffuser.

I did find a nice diffuser for the pop up flash on my D700. Its called the puffer ..nice low profile design that seems to work well with fill flash. I am working with this to balance the high contrast of summer light.

Next ... is to begin working with the gels to balance the flash color temperature with the ambient light. Joe McNally book really woke me up to how little I know about leveraging flash.

What I am looking for now is a really small flash to use for fill with my M8s . Needs to be low profile and little as I just want the fill and catch light. I am looking at small flashes for the 4/3 cameras like the new Ep-1 flash.

I do like the RRS bracket because its easy to work with and it folds down to a small form.

 

[TRSmith]

I have read and seen a few things about the Fong Lightshpere. It might be worth investing in one. I've recently noticed ads for some sort of warming insert. Ring any bells?

 

[glenerrolrd]

Yes .....the lightsphere is an overpriced soft plastic dome that fits with the flash pointed straight up. One of the options is to use a warming top on the dome. This changes the color temperature of the flash to better match a warmer ambient light. Then you have consistency between flash and ambient color temp making color balancing easier.

The most difficult color balancing occurs when you get multiple light sources each with a different temp . I am going to order one of the domes to use with my lightsphere.
FYI you can buy the Gary fong products on amazon..free shipping for Prime members .

 

[fotografz]

Do you ever use your flash off camera? Specifically, do any of you ever attach the flash via an extension cable and hold it in the hand not operating the camera? I think it might be a bit awkward (and tiring) but I'm curious. Is it simply more comfortable to leave the flash attached to the hot shoe and figure clever ways to bounce it?

Thanks!
Tim

p.s. I'm asking Wedding shooters only because it seems likely this group will be using flash regularly, but anyone who's used a flash consistently is free to chime in.

Hi Tim.

Yes, I shoot weddings ... yes, I use flash quite a bit ... and yes, I use it off camera sometimes.

To start, here's the way I generally think of it, which seems to work pretty well:

When using flash look at what ambient light you have to work with first. Then think of the flash as a supplement to the ambient even in darkish conditions. The objective is to use flash and make it look as if none was used.

All that you are really doing is evening out the light balance a bit so the camera can record the scene. If you use too much flash then a proper exposure on the foreground subject will render the background as a wall of black or cast deep drop shadows to the side. The reason some people use brackets is that it keeps the flash centered over the lens, and up high to drop the shadows behind the subject.

This means you need to learn how to read the ambient, set a reasonable ISO/shutter speed/lens aperture and then compensate the flash up or down quickly ... which takes a bit of practice, but not as much as it sounds like here : -)

I use flash on-camera with a diffuser. At weddings you cannot count on a bounce surface all the time, sometimes the surface is a ghastly color, or to far away. If you are to close to the subject and you bounce off the ceiling, it can cause "raccoon eye". So I look at where the ambient is coming from and jockey the diffused flash to fill the shadow side.

I use flash off camera a number of ways.

Usually flash in one hand with a remote in the hot shoe to trigger it. No cords that way. I may hold the flash high up and to the side for directional light ... usually the opposite direction from where the ambient is coming from. Or I may fire it down low for a dramatic "foot lights" look like a theater stage production.

Another way is to use the lights on a stand or sitting on a table out of view... with a remote trigger (if working close to the lights, a Canon STE-2 or Nikon Commander will do, if further away, a Pocket Wizard type radio trigger.)

Last (and best) is the use of studio type strobes with a radio trigger.


The shot with the lighthouse was done by compensating the flash +2 stops because of the strong backlighting.

The Bride at the mirror was compensated down to just fill the shadows but preserve the mirror light.

B&W of the groom grabbing the Bride was direct diffused flash dialed +1 to keep the whites.

The color shot of the procession was direct fill at the camera but weaker than the two side lights.

The kiss at the alter was directional flash held by an assistant camera left ... to light the altar and back light the veil.

 

[TRSmith]

Great overview and terrific examples fotografz! Thanks. You make it look easy but I'm sure there are years of experience behind your technique.

So are you always using the EV setting to effect the amount of fill? What about the power settings and/or the lens focal length?

I need to practice a bit with various ambient light situations and try several of the things I've read here. I might be back at some point with more questions!

Thanks again.
Tim

 

[Bill_Green]

I'm a not a wedding photographer, nor do I play one on TV, but when I do, I generally go for the hand held off camera flash method, occasionally combined with an assistant who will have a flash on a short boom, allowing for various lighting angles and ratios. Being able to light a room with strobes and then using a hand held flash for fill is cool and I have seen it done, but never actually tried it.

My main hotshoe flash is a Metz that has the main strobe and a switchable front firing strobe, allowing me to bounce the main and use the fixed to eliminate raccoon eyes.

I would love to try the Nikon CLS system one day.

I used a bracket system once and got great results with it, but it was just too big and cumbersome.

One small advantage to using a off camera shoe cord instead of a radio trigger is if you accidentally drop the flash, you probably won't break anything.

 

[fotografz]

Great overview and terrific examples fotografz! Thanks. You make it look easy but I'm sure there are years of experience behind your technique.

So are you always using the EV setting to effect the amount of fill? What about the power settings and/or the lens focal length?

I need to practice a bit with various ambient light situations and try several of the things I've read here. I might be back at some point with more questions!

Thanks again.
Tim

Well, digital cameras with their instant review is a fast teacher when it come to flash technique.

No, I do not always use EV compensation on the flash ... just when the ambient lighting warrants it ... strong backlighting, contrasty outdoor, lots of white or black filling the frame, mixed lighting temps and stuff like that. That's why I suggest that everything start with the ambient light that already exists. It seems that this is easier to grasp for non-flash users since they have usually dealt with only ambient ... so it made sense to me to build off of "I'm going to assist the ambient" rather than approaching it from a "I'm going to light this."

Tim, try this technique ... I've showed this to people at weddings shooting with nicer cameras with real flashes and it works for them instantly:

The camera shutter/aperture is what controls the ambient background exposure ... the TTL flash controls the foreground exposure.

As soon as you are in ambient conditions where using AV produces too slow of a shutter speed to hand hold, switch to manual mode on the camera,

set the ISO at the highest one your camera does a reasonable job with (or less if the ambient background is reasonably decent).

set the shutter speed around the focal length of the lens (1/50th if it's a 50mm),

set the lens aperture to the widest you can use and still maintain the depth of field you need (keeping in mind that the wider the lens and the further away you are, the more depth of field you will have).

These steps are easy to remember and will allow you to capture the most ambient background light possible.

Set the flash to TTL. It will light the foreground subject and do it with the least amount of flash needed. The less duration that the flash is on, the more it freezes the action.


Try it, I think you'll be amazed.

 

[TRSmith]

Excellent! An actual easy to understand formula. I'll give it a shot tomorrow with Maggie (long-suffering Golden Retriever).

Thanks,
Tim

 

[fotografz]

Excellent! An actual easy to understand formula. I'll give it a shot tomorrow with Maggie (long-suffering Golden Retriever).

Thanks,
Tim

Yeah, when you are shooting so many shots in so many different locations with just about zero missteps allowed, you tend to simplify down to easy to remember basics and build from there.

Now please understand that this is for lower light situations where you want to also capture some of the ambient background as well as the subject.

Marc

 

[Oxide Blu]

Tim - you asked a great question. It's one of those things with many possible answers. For me: the camera is permanently attached to a frame (old StroboFrame). There is a quick release plate permanently attached to the bottom of the frame, and the strobe on top, up and away from the camera. This strobe is only used for fill light. The main light is a radio controlled strobe on one of those hospital inspired rolling light stands that end up sitting about 30 to 45-deg off to one side of the other. Always 2 lights, minimum, for my wedding photography.

Fwiw, the lens virtually lived on f8, occasionally would see f11, never f5.6.

 

[TRSmith]

Thanks Oxide. The radio controlled slave must be a terrific boon in situations like that. Back in the olden days, one would have had to run cables across the floor to get a strobe head to fire from anywhere but near the camera.

I have been resisting using any form of artificial light, but I am now beginning to see that as both limiting and maybe even a little irrational. As usual, I have more stuff to learn, which is always fun.

 

[glenerrolrd]

This is quite helpful and consistent with what I have been trying. Using more than one camera system takes a lot of experience. Using Nikon AF and flash is about 10% of my shooting(but it should be closer to 30%). Marc you really set a high bar with your examples. Never thought about increasing the flash to bring up the dress.

Working apertures are a big difference. Using Leica s ...I have always done a lot of wide open apertures and avoided the higher ISOs . The trade off between DOF provided , the inherent noise in higher apertures and the ability to balance the ambient light .....is a moving target in a typical wedding.

Could you provide a few examples?

Maybe you can gauge better by reviewing my lessons learned.

1. Using AV and adjusting the flash to fill(say -1 1/3) works great when the EV of the ambient light is enough to give you a steady shutter speed(for me between 1/125 and 1/60 depending on the FL).

2. Unless you are looking for a selective plane of focus (like the mirror example) shoot at 5.6 or 8.0. I loose more images to slight focus errors than flash msitakes. Two people together needs some DOF to cover.

3. When the ambient and flash are about balanced ....keep you shutter speed at 1/125..otherwise you may get some motion from the subject . The flash creates a crisp image and the ambient exposes another less sharply. This happens when you use AV when you should have been on manual.

Maybe my rookie mistakes will fill in the blanks from the experts.

I am interested in better understanding working apertures and ISO trade offs.

Good thread.

 

[TRSmith]

All of this is good stuff. It's making me realize I have a lot of work to do to make this second nature. I know I will not have a lot of time in the "real world" to sit and cogitate on how to make everything balance as I imagine it should.

Without further complicating things, what about High Speed Synch? Is that reserved exclusively for studio-type strobes?

Tim

 

[fotografz]

All of this is good stuff. It's making me realize I have a lot of work to do to make this second nature. I know I will not have a lot of time in the "real world" to sit and cogitate on how to make everything balance as I imagine it should.

Without further complicating things, what about High Speed Synch? Is that reserved exclusively for studio-type strobes?

Tim

High speed sync simply allows you to use fill flash with wider apertures in brighter light where the shutter speed would exceed the normal flash sync speed of the camera.

It accomplishes this by pulsing the light ... so rapidly you can't see it ... but effectively it lessens the reach of the flash quite a bit. In most cases it works okay out to about 10 feet or so, then rapidly diminishes. In the case of HHS, it's often better to remove any diffuser you may be using and ride the compensation controls for the right light balance.

I also remove any diffuser and use direct flash when using a longer lens at a distance. All a diffuser does in this case it make the flash work harder than it has to, or makes it less ineffective. The Fong diffuser without the dome cap allows you do do this by just aiming it down at the distant subject.

 

[fotografz]

This is quite helpful and consistent with what I have been trying. Using more than one camera system takes a lot of experience. Using Nikon AF and flash is about 10% of my shooting(but it should be closer to 30%). Marc you really set a high bar with your examples. Never thought about increasing the flash to bring up the dress.

Working apertures are a big difference. Using Leica s ...I have always done a lot of wide open apertures and avoided the higher ISOs . The trade off between DOF provided , the inherent noise in higher apertures and the ability to balance the ambient light .....is a moving target in a typical wedding.

Could you provide a few examples?

Maybe you can gauge better by reviewing my lessons learned.

1. Using AV and adjusting the flash to fill(say -1 1/3) works great when the EV of the ambient light is enough to give you a steady shutter speed(for me between 1/125 and 1/60 depending on the FL).

2. Unless you are looking for a selective plane of focus (like the mirror example) shoot at 5.6 or 8.0. I loose more images to slight focus errors than flash msitakes. Two people together needs some DOF to cover.

3. When the ambient and flash are about balanced ....keep you shutter speed at 1/125..otherwise you may get some motion from the subject . The flash creates a crisp image and the ambient exposes another less sharply. This happens when you use AV when you should have been on manual.

Maybe my rookie mistakes will fill in the blanks from the experts.

I am interested in better understanding working apertures and ISO trade offs.

Good thread.

Are you using any flash with the Leicas (M or R?) When I shot M film cameras I had flash down pat ... but not so easy with the M8 even though I use ISO 640 on the M8 and the film Ms were ISO 400 film rated at 320.

RE: bringing up the dress by pulsing the flash comp ... the TTL flash works the same as the camera TTL ... if you shot a white filled scene the camera would try to make it middle grey ... flash basically does the same thing using the same standard of measure. So, like with a camera in ambient you'd increase the exposure for a scene dominated by white to achieve white. Same with the flash ... to increase the exposure you would plus the flash compensation.

RE: #1 yep, sounds about right to me ... although today's cameras seem pretty accurate when using AV with TTL flash with very little fiddling ... unless there's a really bright background or something to throw it off. In super demanding conditions where there is no time for trial and error I've even resorted to setting the camera on Program ... which I don't do often, but every time that I have, the exposure has been near perfect. I just don't like the shutter speed/aperture selections usually.

RE: #2 yep, definitely need to stop down when shooting groups ... I keep telling my second shooter this because she keeps losing too many shots. On the other hand I'm big on shooting more open apertures to dissolve the background and isolate the subject. It's a balancing act for sure.

RE:#3 this one I'm not so sure about. 1/125th in a dark reception hall almost assures a wall of black background. If you are using as wide an aperture as you can get away with for DOF, the background goes soft anyway and background motion is less of an issue. Even if there is motion, in most cases I actually like it ... as long as the subject is reasonably sharp.

RE: A few examples:

The candid shot of the Bride and flower girl in window is one of the harder things to pull off IMHO ... to light the subject just enough while retaining some of the rim lighting from the window behind them and not blow out the dress.

The Blurred dance shot at a Sicilian wedding is an example of deliberately including motion for energy ... yet lighting the subject properly. Second shutter and a slow shutter speed was used.

The panoramic formal of the wedding party (I hate doing them, but sometimes you have to) was done by firing an un-diffused, plus compensated flash on a 45º angle at the wall behind me. The Sony ISO max is a lot less than the Nikon D3/D700 so you have to watch how much ambient you have and try to keep the ISO at 500 or less. The D3/D700 does ISO 800 easy.

 

[glenerrolrd]

Marc

You really have this down...great shots and examples!

Re : M/R flash....just don t use it presently. I have a SF-24 but never use it. Just re read all the threads on flash for the M and concluded ..its the Sf-24 for TTL ,the larger Metz units some on TTL , a larger flash on "A" or go back to manual. What I am looking for is a flash with a small,low profile that I can use on the "A" for fill flash.

Re: Working aperture...my biggest frustration with the D3/D700..probably because I am not using them as much as my M s ...too many misses when I try to shoot wide open and use AF . Not sure if this is practice, technique or equipment..or maybe expectations.

Re: balance between ambient and flash...avoiding what is essentially a double exposure....I have more of problem with this when the ambient is fairly good and I let the shutter speed drop below 1/60.

Re: Dark reception hall....my experience exactly ....choice of dark backgrounds or using motion creatively to enhance the image. Better ISO performance helps here.


Thanks again for taking the time to post the examples.

Roger

 

[Oxide Blu]

I finally found out who makes the light stand I use for the off camera strobe at weddings. It is made by Photogenic, 4-wheels, cast iron base (not something to take on an airplane), 8-ft air-cushioned riser. The base is heavy, only 14-in dia so it rolls easily between people and chairs at the reception. With the weight of the cast iron base it is very stable.

You can see it on page 44 of this catalog:

http://www.photogenicpro.com/pdf/Photogenic2007Catalog.pdf

The riser is item 'E' and the base is item 'F'.