Photo flash light with umbrella
Intro
One day, almost every photographer decide or at least start to think about his own studio. The easiest way is to make some kind of amateur studio (atelier) at home. The problem is to find some relevant info or how tos. There just a few articals about this important topic for beginers or people without good infos or
friends whit such know how. I have written this artical in czech years ago however its is
still relevant even today.
Lighting is the key of a lot of types of pictures. We are not going to talk about
expensive soft boxes and pro lighting. The only thing we use is the Nikon DSLR with one wireless TTL comanded flash (Nikon SB-800). The brand here is absolutely not important here, you can get the same with Canon, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic or Sigma. We also use 5-in-1 light reflector / diffuser and some
cheap umbrellas (rain umbrellas :)).
What we need here?
Not much and not very expensive staff...
- Nikon D70 - old DSLR as camera and flash commander. aperiture 5,6, time 1/160, iso 200, white ballance - auto, flash in commander mode.
- Nikon SB-800 - our main light source. Setings: remote TTL with difusion dome and adapter (14mm).
- Holder - we need to hold external flash outside camera, the same whit diffusor and umbrella.
- Silver umbrella - original photo umbrella, cost 30,- USD
- Silver semitransparent umbrella "Tesco" - low cost, low quality Tesco umbrella for 2,- USD (or free). The main advantage of this umbrella is the fact that it is half transparent. You can use it as a diffusor or reflect umbrella. The color is about bluesilvergrey something.
- Reflector 5-IN-1 - we use it as diffusor to make "softbox" efect.
No a jak to dopadlo?
Nebudeme to protahovat, jdeme se podívat na výsledky:
Here is the scene set up and again, camera settings f5.6, 1/160 a ISO 200.
Picture number one: original scene, no special light is used. Just original lighting in the room. We used 1/2 S for shutter. Important area of all picture is around the loudspeaker and on the nose and neck.
Here we have first lighting, direct flash light. What we see is the sharp shadows and very good light on whole picture.
Here we see usage of the silver umbrella (photo type). Very hard and direct light. We can say even agressive. Shadows are a bit softer. We see double shadows around loudspeaker due reflections of the walls and umbrella.
Tesco umbrella as reflector is softer than previous. Light is also with better coverage on the picture thanks to the light which comes through the umbrella. Shadows are not agressive. We also see that there is no big problem with white balance which we could expected.
Tesco umbrella as diffuser. Shadows are very soft and the light is very close to softbox type of lighting.
Here we used 5-in-1 diffuser used as open softbox. The light is soft and shadows very decent.
Result
There is no something like an result, which light is the winner. Every pohotographer is hunting good light for the rest of his light. Without good lighting there is not good picture. The best lighting is the natural light and maybe you have asked yourself why I have choiced such a strange scene for my test. The answer is to compare with some of my older shots when natural sun light comming through window were used:
