How to shoot a portrait with a single flash? Portrait photography skills

How to shoot portraits with a single flash?

From the point of view of photography, nothing in the world attracts us to watch more than other people's photos. Simply say, "Yes, you can take great photos of people with a flash." There are too many ways to shoot with flash. The following are some summaries about taking portraits with flash.

The characteristics of the light you get from a flash are largely determined by its position. A single flash can perform one of the following four tasks:

Main light-provides the main light that illuminates the subject.

Fill light-add light to the shadow so that the audience can see the details that may be hidden.

Separate light-illuminate the subject from the back to separate his hair and shoulders from the background.

Backlight-Illuminate the background, or show the details of the environment, or turn the subject into a silhouette when the background is bright.

Single flash and reflective fill light

The range of light and dark tones that the camera can record is much narrower than what we can see. Just a flash, it is very likely that when you shine light on the bright side of the subject's face, the other side will fall into a deep shadow. A simple solution is to use a reflector to fill the shadow when using a single flash.

The idea of using a reflector to fill the light is to intercept the light passing through the main body and reflect them back. Adjust your flash to let some light pass in front of the main body. This is the light that you need to intercept and reflect back with a reflector. If you adjust the angle of light to keep it away from the main body, this is feather lighting.

When I took this photo, I used a flash on the right side of the camera. There are two key points in taking this photo. One is to block the flash with the flag board to prevent the light from shining directly on the steel door behind the model. The other is to let the light fill the shadow of his face. To keep out the background, I tied a hooligan, FlashBender, to the side of the flash and pointed it at the model's shoulder. In order to fill the shadow, I used a 42-inch gold/silver reflector to reflect the light passing in front of the model's nose back into the shadow. The following is a schematic lighting diagram:

Lighting detail

Environment: indoors

Time: evening

On-site lighting: faint tungsten lamp.

Flash: a 580EX II

Photometric mode: manual

Output power: 1/4

Zoom/Swing: 70mm

Bright film: No.

Decorative accessories: Sto-Fen omni-directional bouncing soft cover is installed on the flash lamp head, and large Rogue FlashBender is installed on the side of the lamp head.

Distance to the subject: about 0.9m.

Height: the same height as the model's head.

Trigger: ultra-long E-TTL cable

Camera details

Camera: 5D Mark II

Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8l.

Distance to the subject: about 2.4m

Exposure mode: manual

Exposure parameters: 1/60s, f/8, ISO 400.

White balance: flash

Think of the shutter as a lighting accessory.

There are two types of light in your flash photography-the light that already exists in the scene and the light that you produce with a flash. It's better to consider it separately.

The existing light (spotlight) can be dimmed at a higher shutter speed or brightened at a lower shutter speed. If you use the camera's Av (Aperture Priority Mode) to shoot, you can dim or brighten the spotlight through exposure compensation. If shooting in camera manual mode, you can directly adjust the shutter speed.

The camera's exposure meter wants to see a medium-density gray world. If you shoot in a dark environment, the camera usually overexposed the scene (relative to the scene in front of you). The picture below was taken in a rather dark conference room of a company. My Gitzo tripod allows me to take this photo at the camera's expected shutter speed 1/3 seconds. The background looks brighter than it really is. Note that the flash triggered by E-TTL causes the shadow of the nose, which is mixed with the shadow of the scene.

In the above picture, I adjusted the shutter speed from 1/3 seconds to 1/200 seconds-a change of six gears. The flash output power set by E-TTL is similar to the above figure. Lighting schematic diagram is as follows:

Lighting detail

Environment: company meeting room

Time: Never mind.

Site lighting: dim incandescent lamp

Flash: a 580EX II

Measurement mode: E-TTL

Flash exposure compensation: 0 FEC

Zoom/Rotate: Zoom to105mm.

Bright film: No.

Decorative accessories: none.

Distance: About 1.8m from the subject.

Height: the height of the subject's head

Trigger: ultra-long E-TTL cable

Camera details

Camera: 5D Mark II

Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8l.

Distance to main body:1.8m.

Exposure mode: Av, and then manual.

Exposure compensation: 0, then -6.

Exposure parameters: above 1/3s, f/8, ISO 400；; ; Below 1/200 seconds, f/8, ISO 400

White balance: daylight

The sun is the side light, and the flash is the supplementary light.

I like shooting in the sun. This is especially effective in outdoor portrait shooting, because solar energy will produce bright outlines around the hair and shoulders of the subject. The problem is that our camera can't capture the details in this bright highlight and shadow at the same time. At this time, the flash will be happy to act as a rescuer.

When you point the camera at the sun, unless you want to show the subject as a silhouette, you need to fill the light with a flash to show the details in the shadow. There are several aspects to consider about the fill light: where to put the flash, whether it needs decoration and how to decorate it.

Of course, you can put the flash on the top of the camera to fill the light (this is also the idea of Canon engineers when designing), but I prefer to move the flash away from the top of the camera. Usually, I will put it opposite the sun. I will imagine a straight line, starting from the sun and passing through the main body, and then put the flash on the extension of this straight line.

As for whether to decorate the flash, it depends on two aspects: how much light I need from the flash and the characteristics of the light I need. I suggest you try both direct flash and large reflector flash.

In the above set of pictures, the top picture is not filled with light, the model is just a bad silhouette, and the bottom picture is filled with direct flash. Lighting schematic diagram is as follows:

Lighting detail

Environment: Vineyard

Time: afternoon

Living light: direct sunlight

Flash: a 580EX II

Measurement mode: E-TTL

Flash exposure compensation: 0 FEC

Zoom/Rotate:105mm

Bright film: 1/2 density CTO

Decorative accessories: none.

Distance: about 3.7 meters away from the subject.

Height: about 0.3m above the subject's head.

Trigger: ultra-long E-TTL cable

Camera details

Camera: 5D Mark II

Lens: 100mm f/2.8L macro is

Distance to the subject: about 4.6m

Exposure mode: aperture priority

Exposure compensation: -2/3 files

Exposure parameters:11600 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 100.

White balance: daylight