Practical photography skills of single lamp lighting

Flash can make or break a photo. The flash is just a light source, it obeys your arrangement. Let me introduce you to what a single lamp is.

Practical photography skills of single lamp lighting

This article will tell you why you need to use a flash. The simplest but most important conclusion is "create the light you want". Therefore, there will be no absolute standard and usage for flash photography, so flash is a very important tool and skill, which can control and change the light as much as possible. In addition, there will be some additional benefits. Using flash correctly can make you take wonderful photos. Based on the degree that ordinary small flashing lights can do, this paper makes some sharing and suggestions.

At the beginning, we usually only had one lamp, so catching light with a single lamp can be said to be the simplest or most basic. But after reading many articles on the Internet, I also know that "just one lamp" may be difficult.

However, first of all, we should share the basic single lamp technology. There are also many outdoor cameras specially used for outdoor shooting in the market. The output and light quality are better than those of small flash, which is convenient to carry, but the second advantage of small flash is also very good: "high-speed synchronization." In general, the shutter of outdoor lighting of shed lamp is the same as that of outdoor lighting.

The stepping speed is around 1/250, which is of course very sufficient in the shed (note: whether the shutter synchronization speed of 1/250 can be surpassed by some high-order flashers), once outdoors, the shutter speed of 1/250 is enough.

Will become a shooting limit.

1, light is logic

The first basic thing of lighting is to find that Chu Guang must have its own source, especially in the outdoor environment. You must first find out where the light should come from, and then do the thinking and design of lighting according to this logic.

Just like this photo is actually for the correct exposure outside the window, in fact, there is almost no light in the room, almost all black. But because there is a desk lamp above the main body, I followed this idea and added a simple flashing light from the direction of the lamp. Of course, there are many improvements in this photo, but it reflects the light logic well.

The more logical your flashing light is, the easier it is for you to hide the trace of your light.

2. Equipment required for flashover

The camera internal flash controls the external flash trigger.

Flash off-plane extension line

Infrared trigger (such as Nikon SU-4)

External flash controls the external flash trigger (more than two flash lamps are required).

Canon 600EX flash series wireless flasher with built-in wireless system.

In my experience, light trigger is the simplest and most convenient way to escape from the flash, especially the original flash can also be TTL and high-speed synchronization. But the biggest disadvantage is that the light trigger is easy to be triggered, because the position of the sensing point can't sense light.

Wireless flasher is another way to flash off the plane, which I think is very useful. Wireless flasher has noble brands, such as Pocket Wizard, which has the advantage of supporting TTL and high-speed synchronization, but it is expensive. But it's also on the market.

Brands that are very cheap and only need a few hundred dollars, such as Stander, are really useful except that they can't synchronize TTL at high speed. Although I have my own pocket wizard, I brought back a group of Stender.

Canon's latest flashing light series has undoubtedly solved most of the flashover problems, which can be said to be quite good products. I hope Nikon will follow up as soon as possible.

The quality of light is a very laborious exercise, because the lamp tube of small flash is very small, so the quality of light is not good and the output is low. Creating high-quality light requires a lot of additional instruments to assist. Creating different textures of light is really a very complicated course, and I am still learning it. At this stage, I will simplify the quality of light into the area of light source, that is, how to expand the luminous area of small flash lamp.

3. On a cloudy day, just add a little light.

Although it is easy to take pictures on cloudy days, there will always be situations where the light is too flat. Sometimes, except the subject can't jump out, the skin color of the face will be less pleasing. It is very simple and easy to catch the light on a cloudy day or in poor light, because the light of the flash can be felt with a little supplement, and the output of a small flash is absolutely enough.

4, single light jump light shooting

At first, the most commonly used single lamp should belong to jumping lamp, that is, reflecting the wall to create a large area of light. Jumping lights can be said to be the simplest and cheapest way to manufacture large-area light sources, but there is a very difficult problem to overcome: controlling the diffusion of light.

The biggest disadvantage of jumping lamp is that it can't control the propagation of flashing light, especially in the case of small indoor space. Often, a jumping lamp will make the light bounce out of the indoor space, and many of them will be

Everything that shouldn't be lit is lit. Therefore, it is necessary to capture light directly from the main body through some additional instruments.

Before learning flashing lights, I think we also need to know why we need to use flashing lights. I believe most people know why they need a flash. The simplest reason is: "the light in the scene is not good." The other is a common technique used by photographers, that is, deliberately changing the light of the scene to create photos with different general visual experiences, that is, "drama".

5, there are many media, and the quality of the flash is instantly added.

If you need a beautiful lamp, and there are not many lamps, then the easiest thing is to find translucent materials around your life to use.

When taking this picture, the whole picture is extremely dark, so there is little light coming in from the window (note: similarly, sometimes if the natural light is excellent, there is no need to flash extra lights)

6. A warm lamp.

Flash has the color temperature of flash, and all kinds of artificial light sources in life also have different color temperatures, so there are so many different filters to match the flash, but it seems that many people will ignore the filter. In this photo, the position of the newcomer station is almost completely black under such exposure conditions, and it needs to be scratched.

From the logic of light, this photo will feel that the light should come from the desk lamp next to it, so just make your flashing light match the color of this desk lamp. I used a full concentration orange filter (all CTO) for this photo.

7, coating soft light

Jumping lights is the fastest way to generate a large area of light, and it is often a good way to catch light, especially when you just need a uniform light and meet a picture that doesn't need too much personality. This photo is a photo of my granddaughter mending her grandmother's makeup, and it is also a photo I like very much. But there is actually a large French window on the right side of this photo, so there is actually quite a lot of ambient light on the right side of the photo. Therefore, when jumping lights, we should catch the light on the left, and try our best to balance the two to think. Generally speaking, my experience is that it takes two flashing lights to jump all over a room. The output of two circuit breakers does not have to be exactly the same, and it can be a very simple level.

8. Color Movie Wars

Color film is also used. This is a very dark small restaurant with ISO 1600, aperture F2.8, shutter 1/50, and the environment is still very dark. In such a dark environment, a small flash is really powerful. The only difficulty is how to fill the light without destroying the atmosphere. So you also need to get excellent film. I used 1/2 orange filter and 65% pink filter for this flash.

Of course, the light does not completely conform to the scene light, but my thinking direction is that I don't want the whole person to be too orange or too pink, and I hope that the characters can stand out a little from this environment. In such an environment, jumping lights will completely destroy the atmosphere at the scene, so I used a Lastolite soft mask to hit the main body directly.