Practical skills of flash photography

In fact, flash photography can do a lot of things. Several flash shooting techniques introduced here are practical and easy to master. Mastering these skills can greatly improve the shooting quality of flash photography. Let's study together!

Except for the off-board flasher, which needs hot shoe flasher connection, pc interface flasher connection or synchronous flasher, other projects do not need any additional equipment. In this way, whether shooting with the external flash system of a SLR camera or shooting with the built-in flash of a portable camera, excellent flash photography can be taken.

1. Skillfully use the built-in flash.

Pocket cameras, portable cameras and low-end SLR cameras are usually equipped with built-in flash, which can supplement the light when shooting and achieve light balance. Usually people think that this kind of flash is dispensable and will not play much role in formal shooting. But in fact, if you use the built-in flash flexibly and give full play to its inherent potential, you can get unexpected shooting results. It should be noted that when using the built-in flash, especially when installing a hood in front of the lens, it is necessary to avoid the shadow phenomenon caused by the hood and the lens barrel blocking the light of the flash.

The built-in flash is a direct flash, which means that the flash light directly reaches the subject from the flash. When using the built-in flash, you only need to set the flash to the flash fill light shooting mode, or just pop up the flash to shoot. A part of the shooting light using an external flash mounted on a flash hot shoe is also a direct flash. The first thing you need to do is to accurately adjust the direction of the flash lamp holder, so that the flash falls right on the subject. Secondly, you need to set the flash mode of the flash, and finally achieve accurate flash. If you want to accurately control the shooting effect, you need to use a flash and camera system that has and supports TTL function.

Two. Reflective flash lamp

Reflective flash can achieve softer light effect than direct flash in portrait photography. You can use the ceiling or white wall as a reflector to reflect light. The light reflected by the reflector is much softer than the light directly hitting the subject, which can make the character modeling more stereoscopic and the picture more vivid. In addition, in the depth picture shooting of two or three people, reflective flash can make the subject get better lighting effect than direct flash. In addition, the reflective flash can also effectively prevent the occurrence of red eye phenomenon.

The effect of reflection depends on the size and smoothness of the reflector. The rougher the reflecting surface, the softer the light. It is this effect of reflection through the ceiling or wall that makes the reflected flash obtain a softer light effect than the direct flash of the flash. If you flash at the ceiling, the effect of light reflected from the top of the object is very similar to that of shadows formed on people's faces in cloudy weather. In reflective flash, the angle, position and distance from the wall will directly affect the shooting effect. Only by accumulating shooting experience can a photographer get a satisfactory flash effect in the final picture.

In reflective flash photography, light or white objects should be selected as reflectors, and black or other objects should be avoided. Only in this way can the reflected light have normal color and the subject can obtain accurate color reproduction. If a black reflector is used, the flashing light will be absorbed by the reflector and the reflection effect will be poor. In actual shooting, in addition to using professional reflectors, you can also choose plastic foam boards, calendars, white sheets and so on. As a reflector for reflecting light.

For reflection flash photography, we should use closed exposure method or use digital camera to shoot, and immediately check the exposure effect to ensure the accurate exposure of the final picture.

Step 3: Use color filters.

The background of the photo will appear ugly green when it is taken by the flash under the fluorescent lamp. If we add a complementary color filter in front of the flash and lens, we can effectively solve this problem. If we put a 30CC green filter in front of the flash and a 30CC chroma filter in front of the lens, we can correct the color of the object under the fluorescent lamp. Lee filter's fluorescent lamp calibration system is a good choice. This 4×4 inch filter system is suitable for fluorescent light sources with different color temperatures, and is equipped with a filter gel quick connection seat, which can be applied to any lens below 82 cm.

If you don't like using Lee filter kit, you can add a 30CC green filter in front of the flash and a magenta filter in front of the camera to effectively balance the colors. How exactly does the complementary color filter work? When the green filter is added to the flash, the object in the foreground of the picture can be illuminated by the sunlight filtered by the filter, so that the color temperature of the scene on the background is consistent. Adding a magenta filter in front of the camera can balance the color temperature of the whole picture. However, it should be noted that the subject must be within the effective flash distance of the flash.

In addition, in flash photography, color filters with different colors are added in front of flashlights at different positions, so that multiple subjects or the same subject can be illuminated by these flashlights, showing a picture effect of overlapping multi-color shapes in the picture.

4. Curtains flash synchronously

This technique is related to the specific flash. For low-end SLR cameras and flashlights, you have no choice. The flash usually flashes when the shutter is open. For high-end cameras and flashlights, theoretically, you can choose to flash at any time between shutter opening and shutter closing. In fact, we divide it into front screen synchronization and Hou Lian synchronization. But what is the difference between the two? In 90% of cases, there is no difference between the two, but when shooting moving objects in front of a black background, such as shooting cars driving at night or dancers in front of a black background, there will be differences. If the front curtain synchronization is used, there will be light trace in the direction of the moving object, but in fact, if the light trace is behind the object, it will feel more natural, and the shooting effect of Hou Lian synchronization is the latter. About the setting of curtain synchronous flash, some are on the camera, some are on the flash, and some are both. If your camera uses front curtain synchronization, then your flash is Hou Lian synchronization. What is the necessity of front curtain synchronization? This is because of the need of portrait shooting. Suppose you want to take a picture of a child smiling in low light, but don't want to miss this moment, you can use the front curtain to flash synchronously when the shutter is just opened.

Verb (abbreviation for verb) slow synchronous flash

You may have taken a picture with a dark background at a wonderful party, lacking the lively and joyful atmosphere at the party. This may be because you used the automatic file or program file on the camera to shoot. At this time, the flash synchronization speed of the flash is between 1/60- 1/90 seconds, which is too fast to record the environmental details under the background light. The professional tip is to use slow synchronization as much as possible to ensure that the background has enough exposure time to get the correct exposure.

Usually, you can shoot at the speed of 1/8- 1/30 seconds, so you don't have to worry about the subject blurring due to the slow speed, because the flash speed of the flash is generally a few thousandths of a second, which is enough to overcome the influence of the subject or camera shaking on the picture clarity. Such a slow synchronization speed can make the picture get more details and better environment atmosphere than the program mode shooting.

Slow synchronization can effectively improve the shooting effect of flash, but it should be used with caution when the ambient light is complex and the subject moves. You must remember that even if you use manual exposure mode on the camera, the flash mode of the flash must still be TTL flash or automatic flash mode, otherwise the situation will be very bad.

When you use a low-end camera, and the camera does not have manual or speed priority exposure mode, you can still take slow synchronous flash shooting. You only need to set the shooting mode to night shooting mode, and the camera will automatically slow down the synchronization speed and get rich environmental details. At this time, the exposure speed may be below 1/8 seconds, so a tripod must be used when shooting. (It should be noted that the night scene mode of some cameras will prohibit the flash from flashing when shooting).

Flash synchronization speed is the highest shutter speed required by the camera to ensure the synchronous flash of the flash. The flash synchronization speed of the new camera has reached1125 seconds; The flash synchronization speed of high-end autofocus cameras can reach 1/250 seconds. If you want to know the flash synchronization speed of your camera, you can check the instruction manual of the camera. Manual cameras can view speed dials, and the flash synchronization speed is usually marked with fonts with different colors from other speeds. If your shooting shutter speed is higher than the flash synchronization speed, then you will get a flash white bar or no flash.

Intransitive verb non-vehicle flash

There is a defect in the built-in flash of the camera, that is, no matter what the actual shooting scene and light are, your flash will always be in the same position and the flash effect will be exactly the same. Most portrait shooting guides suggest that when shooting a portrait, the direction of the flash light should make an angle of 45 degrees with the axis direction from the camera to the subject, which can make the figure more stereoscopic. In this case, there will be no obvious shadow on the edge of the subject. One of the prerequisites of 45-degree flash is off-camera flash, which usually allows you to control the light needed for shooting more accurately and freely.

In addition to the built-in flash, the external flash can be connected to the camera through the flash hot shoes on the fuselage and PC (Flash Synchronous Terminal) interface to shoot, but when it is installed on the fuselage to shoot, the illumination angle of light will be greatly limited, which is very unfavorable for the picture modeling of the subject. If you use PC interface to connect the flash, or use flash synchronous flasher to flash the flash, you can arrange the flash flexibly and get a very unique picture modeling effect.

Almost all mainstream cameras provide or support wired or wireless off-camera flash solutions, and users can choose flexibly according to their own needs.

7. Flash fill light

In English, "flash fill light" is called "fill light flash", which literally means "fill light flash". Flash fill light is to use flash to fill light. In this kind of shooting, natural light or artificial light is dominant as the inherent light of the shooting scene, and the flash light is only a supplement. The fill light flash can effectively balance the light effect between the foreground and the background or between the subject and the background while realizing the correct exposure, so that the tone of the whole picture can be effectively balanced.

In fact, this kind of flash photography is to expose two kinds of light on a picture at the same time. One exposure is ambient light exposure, and the exposure of light is determined by the aperture and shutter speed, where the aperture controls the intensity of light and the shutter speed controls the exposure time; Another exposure is flash exposure, and the intensity of light is determined by aperture, flash index, distance between flash and subject and flash duration. For the latter kind of light, the photographer can control the intensity of light by adjusting the distance between the flash and the subject or adjusting the aperture value, and the exposure time is the duration of the flash. Because the actual shutter speed is often lower than the duration of electronic flash, the shutter speed usually has no effect on the exposure of flash.

Expansion: Flash Shooting Raiders

By lighting up the main body of the picture, a more perfect exposure balance can be achieved.

Few photographic accessories can bring immediate changes to your work like flash. Many people hate flashlights, especially the strong light contrast; There are also some people who are die-hard fans of flash, so you must use flash to take pictures. With the help of the real-time playback function of digital cameras, we don't have to have a similar aversion to flash.

Of course, it is impossible to set the flash to automatic mode and put it on hot boots. You need a little skill. The most common mistake made by beginners in flash photography is to use overhead flash as the main light to take photos with stiff light and heavy shadows. We can use the overhead flash to achieve a similar effect, thus losing the meaning of external flash. Therefore, it is necessary to give full play to its functions and use off-plane flash skills as much as possible to create more professional effects.

The budget of 1000 yuan is enough for us to choose the combination of shared flash or off-board flash. This paper mainly introduces how to use the set-top box flash more effectively. The best choice is to use overhead flash as fill light. The specific ways and angles of filling light are very diverse, and there are different shooting methods according to different shooting things, which need more practice and thinking in practice.

Flash synchronization speed

When setting exposure, it should be noted that most SLR cameras have an upper shutter speed limit when using the flash, which is usually 1/200 seconds or 1/250 seconds. Some flashlights support the so-called high-speed synchronization function and support higher shutter speed when shooting. Please refer to the flash manual for specific usage.

Flash setting

There are three main factors to consider when setting the flash: the aperture size used, the output power of the flash and the distance between the flash and the main body of the picture. When setting the exposure combination of ambient light, the aperture size has been determined, and we only need to pay attention to the last two points. For overhead flash, the flash distance depends on your shooting distance.

The output power of most thousand yuan flashlights is not very strong. When the aperture is f/8, the effective distance of the total light output is generally about three to four meters, so we must pay attention to this when shooting. The next thing to consider is the output power of the flash. Most digital SLR can control the light output power of the flash to achieve exposure balance through automatic TTL metering, which is more suitable for novices. If you think the subject is too bright, you can set the flash exposure compensation to-1ev; Too dark, you can set the flash exposure compensation to+1EV.

Manual flash

TTL auto flash is more suitable for beginners, but like all automatic settings, it may cause the main body of the picture to be too bright or too dark relative to the background. When you think you can play with the flash, you might as well start trying to set the flash manually to get a more consistent effect. Manual flash control requires some practice, as well as repeated study of flash instructions and the correct method of setting the output power of the flash according to the distance of the subject on the backplane.

When you first try to set manually, it may be difficult for you to distinguish the effects of different options on the shooting results. Then we might as well study step by step with plenty of time. After setting the camera to manual mode, only change one setting at a time, and then observe the influence of changing this setting on exposure.