More With Off Camera Lighting (Strobist)
You may have read my previous post about how I started to get into off camera lighting (Strobist). I took it all a step further last week and picked up a 45″ umbrella, an umbrella clamp, and a stand to further my efforts into the technique.
At first I took some amazing shots of my wife with the setup but last night I went with some smaller subjects. I wanted to see the effects using the umbrella vs. using the flash directly on the subject or by bouncing it off local surfaces (ceiling and walls).
“Lucky Leilani” served as my model for the little project. She proved to be a very patient participant in the work.
In this first image, the SB-600 was aimed over and down on the model 45 degrees to camera right while being fired through the umbrella. What you can see is that the light is very evenly distributed all over the model providing a nice exposure.
As a comparison, the same setup was used except this time, the umbrella was removed. In this second image, the SB-600 was aimed directly on the model 45 degrees to camera left without the umbrella. What can be seen is that the shadows on the model are much harsher producing a more dramatic effect but I struggled with getting a proper exposure. While I like the shadows here, I do not like how the image is under exposed.
In talking with other Stobists on Twitter and Flickr, it was recommended to me to move the SB-600 to an angle of 60 degrees or more in future experiments in order to maintain the dramatic effect of the shadows while getting the exposure right.
I plan on playing around more with this in order to get the results that I am looking for. If you have any questions about the equipment that I am using or what the set-up looks like, Email and I will be glad to answer you.
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