Originally posted by leadbelly I've always been fascinated with "faking natural light" to produce results wherein the viewer won't notice that a flash has been used, as opposed to the strobist style, where flash is used off-camera, obvious though used in a creative and appealing way... here is a link that taught me a lot regarding "faking natural light" with the flash gun ON THE CAMERA. Fascinating really. The author rarely uses off-camera techniques... (though no on-board flash).
edit: forgot the link:
http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/ Thanks for the link! Looks like a lot of good reading material there. I have not had much look with on-camera flash so it will be interesting to check out. And I'd like to put my monster Metz 58 to better use than just flash triggering which is what it's been doing lately.
(Though it comes in handy for when you need to light up a big area, just point it at the ceiling and let 'er rip.. that thing has some serious power!)
It's interesting how everything ends up being a delicate balance between light power, positioning, size, distance...e.g. you can make a light source relatively larger by moving it closer, but when you do you also greatly affect the relative amount of light covering the subject at given distances from the light source.
For instance, say you have a subject 3 feet wide and your light is off to the side from it.
If the light's six feet away, the side furthest from the source gets 6^2/(6+3)^2 = .44 times the amount of light that the side closest to it does. Move the light to three feet away and the side furthest now gets 3^2/(3+3^2) = 0.25 times the amount. So by moving the light source closer it went from just over a stop difference to two stops. Sounds bad, right? But by moving the light source (let's pretend it's a softbox) closer you've increased the relative size of it to the subject, which will make it more smooth/soft. So it's a tradeoff like everything else.
It would be great if some people would share lighting setups that they've had success with, and what they've learned.
By the way, did a quick test with on camera direct flash:
Versus off camera with shoot-through umbrella (maybe two feet to the left of me):
Even moving the light a little and adding a basic modifier makes a big difference!