Flash Photography - Off Camera Flash

First, if you want to know more about Off camera flash photography , check out the Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 guides from Strobist Blogspot. The website is all about learning  how to use off camera flash starting from the beginning to all technical aspects.

 

Once you have tried a few times of your onboard flash, you will quickly realise the limitation of the very week onboard flash. Not only it is very weak (but still useful for some occasions) and has no  FP High Speed Sync mode, the lighting is very much directional and produces very harsh shadows to your subjects.

 

External flashes (Speedlights) helps to create a much more natural and balanced image by offering:

• swivel flash head to allow bouncing the light off walls or at least a diffuser can be attached to help diffuse the harsh light,
• a much longer flash shooting distance range (higher Guide number)
• off camera trigger to operate as a remote flash, forming a powerful Creative Lighting System (CLS)
• act as an commander to wirelessly trigger remote flashes (SB-900 and SB-800)

 

Nikon SB-900 and SB-600 triggered by Nikon D700 onboard commander

Off Camera

With the luxury of external flashes, don’t be afraid to use them off camera. Off camera flash often produces less harsh shadow due to being able to position the flash off axis . This is much more desire than placing the flash on the camera to light up your subject front on.

 

Diffuser

A Diffuser is used to diverge the light (less concentrate) to give a soft light. The most simple way without any additional equipment is to bounce the flash light to reflective ceilings and walls. This effectively turns the ceilings and walls to a huge spotlight to create a much softer light source. There are many diffusers that can be used in conjunction with the speedlights:

 

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Flash Diffuser Dome	Flash Umbrella	Softbox

Here I illustrate one of the most simple lighting setup, which works very well. First, position an umbrella on the left hand side about 45 degree towards the subject and then a silver reflector on the right hand side (or vice versa).  The idea here is to use the umbrella to create a diffused light source off centre and then use the reflector to fill in the shadows.

and the results

Where can I find the equipment seen on this site?

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Sunday Gaming

While outside is raining hard and heavy, I am busy fighting the Orcs and Tyranids.

It was thrilling and exciting, but also relaxing.

The game - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Level 16 Commander with Terminator Armour

Day 54, the fight must goes on

Defending generators success

Fighting Lictor

Acer Aspire One AOA150 RAM Upgrade

This is one of the hardest RAM upgrade. Basically, I have to take the whole Netbook apart to get to the RAM slot at the bottom, then put it back together.

Full instructions can be found here, so I won't repeat it.

First, Take out the keyboard.

Next, take out the Chassis

Intel Inside

WiFi Card using mini PCIE slot

Flip it over to get to the RAM slot on the left. On the right is the HDD.

Overall Netbook layout

LX3 Wallpapers

Camera: Panasonic DMC-LX3

Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)

Aperture: f/2.0

ISO: 400

Acer AspireOne Netbook 8.9’

Got this today to replace my normal 15” Laptop. It is about half the size of standard 15” Laptop.  Given that I usually have lots of camera gear to carry when I go to travel, the Acer Netbook is perfect as my travel companion.

Processor and Chipset

Intel® Atom™ processor N270
(1.60GHz, 533MHz, 512KB L2 Cache)
Mobile Intel 945GSE Chipset (DDR2 400/533MHz)

LCD Type & Size

8.9" WSVGA High-Brightness LED Backlight Widescreen Display, support 1024 x 600 pixel resolution

Memory

Up to 1GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM

Storage

160GB Hard Drive (Microsoft® Windows XP® Home)

Weight and Dimensions

249 (W) x 170 (D) x 29 (H) mm
985 g

Forest Portraits

Summer Nature