Skip to main content

Flashy

Photography is all about lighting. When all is said and done, it's about getting the light to bounce off things in a nice way and land in the right place on a photosensitive surface. Dictionary definition, right there. But what if the light you have available is rubbish? You have to supplement.

Up to now I've been limited to built-in flash and a non-adjustable slave for backlighting. Not great for getting light in just the right place because you're basically limited to pointing the light straight at the subject. Harsh shadows abound. However, I recently took delivery of a Yongnuo YN-460 flash. It's entirely manual, so no TTL or auto-metering. It has no zoom. But it does boast an impressive range of features considering that it costs £30.

It has adjustable flash power, from full to 1/64th. It has slave mode so you can use it off camera. It has a fully adjustable head, with 90 degrees of movement vertically and 270 degrees horizontally. Pointing it where you need it is no bother at all. It also has a deflector and diffuser built in that handily stash in the top when not in use.

But what to do with it? Portraits! Combine the new flash, the slave for handling background, and my nifty fifty I had a go at shooting some nice shots of Emma and the kids.


Using the YN-460 in full power mode pointing at the ceiling, and my little slave flash bouncing off the wall behind the subject, I got this lovely blown out background combined with a nicely balanced foreground. I generally shot between 1/125th and 1/250th second, because the flash couldn't deal with any more and the lack of automatic sync meant I got tearing.

I was shooting entirely in RAW to make the most of the available light. Combining that with Aperture 3 I had a load of options to play with. Like this.


Now, taking pictures of the kids is an interesting proposition. Getting them to smile, or do something photo-worthy, while managing to also keep control of the framing and focus is a bit of a black art, it seems.


After trying one technique of getting them to tickle each other just as I was about to shoot, I went one better and told Daniel to bite Larissa's nose. Here is the result.


Good eh? I like it, anyway. Just messing about at the end I also got this lovely portrait of Larissa shaking her head, attempting to wibble her lips. She was grinning too much for any wibbly action, but her swishing hair more than makes up for it.


So, the YN-460 then. Nice flash. Low build quality according to reviews, but mine seems alright. And it's entirely manual, so be prepared to learn about flash theory and fiddle with it quite a bit, especially if bouncing it off walls. But well worth the cash, I feel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shooting the Enterprise

I was recently asked if I could help out providing an image for a magazine article about stress management. For reasons as yet undiscovered the requested image would be of the USS Enterprise flying through a storm in space. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time (just a couple of hours), but I did have a very nice model of the Enterprise D I could use to build the image around. Thinking fast, I rigged up a rather slapdash rig consisting of a black reflector backdrop, an umbrella and stand from which dangled the model by a thread, and a couple of strobes. One light above, diffused, to provide the key light, and another, reflected and lower power, to fill some of the very dark shadows. It ended up all looking something like this: Using a fast shutter, f/16 and cunning flash positioning I managed to keep the background black and give the model suitably textured lighting so it didn't have that flat, uniform, shadowless appearance of, well, a model. The narrow aperture obv
Post a Comment
Read more

Fairy Lights

Street lights at night can be very pretty. For someone who lives close to the centre of a large city, skirting round the edge of the town centre can provide a host of beautiful views at night. One advantage to using a wide open lens when taking these pictures is the capture of bokeh, or creative blur. An extreme example is shown to your right; a mass of coloured circles that roughly represent the city they are part of. A more subtle example, of course, is in the picture of the day at the top of this post. The lights cluster around the top of the leaves like fireflies, obviously part of a cityscape but at the same time abstract. The extreme out of focus image is a blurred version of the picture on the left. A view over Sheffield from Pitsmoor, looking up Netherthorpe Road and up to the university. Even when the buildings are focussed (roughly; I'm still practicing) the lights take on the shape of the lens's aperture. I try to incorporate some foreground focus wh
4 comments
Read more

Another canal walk

The sun has started being a little more present lately, so some mornings are actually quite pleasant. On one such morning I decided to have a wander up the canal. The clouds made everything look a bit Toy Story, and the low sun gave a lovely light and contrast to everything else. Of course, it wasn't sunny everywhere. But even in the darker places, such as right underneath Leeds railway station, the sun had a go at peeking in.
Post a Comment
Read more