Blog Marco

I did a bit of experimenting at a graduation event the other week.

Mind the blurred faces: this is only for illustration purposes only.

The goal of this photo was to expose for both the candle light in the background as well as the foreground subjects, while also darkening the back to blacken out the distracting background.

The shutter speed is much less than the focal length, hence it is recommended that you use a tripod or brace yourself (lean against a table or wall or tighten your elbows) when taking the photo, to avoid blur.

Another feature of the room was low ceilings which made for a good bounce light environment. the flash was angled at 45 degrees and with the reflector card out - to capture the catch light in their eyes. (A feature in the SB-800)

A consequence of these settings is that you produce a photo that is severely underexposed. I photoshopped the photo using the curves feature only to push the exposure on the subjects.

This photo had similar goals as above, but I wanted to try something new. The flash was set similarly as above.

The shutter here is dangerously slow and does introduce slight blur in the background if you don't brace yourself or use a tripod. However the flash exposes for the subjects and hence blur is not an issue for the subjects.

In this photo, since the aperture was wider than the previous photo and since the shutter time was much longer, the photograph picks up more ambient light.

A negative consequence of this technique is that the flash strobe fires at a very strong rate and may blind your subjects temporarily.

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So in both these photos you risk slight blur if you don't brace yourself.

If you want to have candlelight in the background with a black type background set your camera to: @65mm F8 : 1/30 secs with flash at TTL.

If you want to have candlelight in the background with an ambient light type background then set it like so: @ 29mm, F4 : 2/3 or 1/1.5 secs with flash at TTL.

These photographs were shot with kit lens Nikon D70 camera with the Nikon SB-800 flash.

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