What's up with flash

I have been using flash on my camera when I needed more light for a long time. Most of the time I will point the flash at the ceiling or a wall to bounce the light, making it softer. This works well and is much better than pointing it right at your subject. Now I'm starting to get into off camera flash, so this blog is just my first thoughts on how the photos are looking and I will do a more detailed post about the equipment when I'm sure that I'm happy with it. With off camera flash you have more options to controlling where the light is coming from.

Here are the first photos I would like to take a look at.

Both of these photos were take at 100m f2 ISO 100 exposure 1/125 sec, and with one off camera flash. Both of the photos have only had minimal editing one to see what it looks like out of camera and two because I like the way these photos came out. The left was taken with the flash pointed at the cat using an on flash diffuser that came with the flash, the photo on the right was taken using a bounce umbrella. The main difference with these to photos is that the cat moved a little changing where the shadow fell on her eye. Overall the light in the photo on the right photo looks a little softer. Looking at the photos more closely we can see whats going on a bit better.

Looking at the areas in red you can see that the light is smoother on her fur in the photo on the right and just gives the photo an overall nicer look.

The next two photo I want to look at are photos of Sam there is a lot that's different in the photos but they might be interesting to take a look at the shadows.

Both of these photos have the same camera settings 100m f2 ISO 100 exposure 1/125 sec. The white background photo was taken with one flash using a bounce umbrella and the second flash bouncing of the background. The photo with the blue background used a flash pointed at Sam with a on flash diffuse and the second flash bouncing of the ceiling. I think both photos have good light to shadow transition with few hard lines. But the photo with the blue background does have some harder lines around Sam cheeks and the shadow under his chin. I think most people including me would be happy with the lighting in either of these photos. The photo with the white background has more shadow but because of the bounce umbrella there is a more gradual transition for light area to shadow areas.

I'm looking forward to working with off camera flash more and there will likely be some more blogs about lighting with flash.

Hope you enjoyed this blog, new blog coming out next Friday, don't forget to like and share it really makes a difference.

Cheers