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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
01-13-2019, 10:43 AM
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Yes! We've been discussing the likely impact of mixing indoor school building lights with flash on BruceBanners's thread, and there seems to be very little advantage to trying to record any of such ambient light into the mix, mainly because of the need to make longer exposures (not good for steadiness / sharpness) but also to avoid unpleasant colour casts. With our flash WB we and the same temperature coming from all our flashes we can have perfectly controlled natural skin tones.
Aleonx3, absolutely I agree on not using a dome type diffuser if possible, as the wide spread of light can kill off any directionality and contrast on the faces. I will certainly explore moer with the front LED catchlight on the AF-540FGZII though!
And of course, off-camera flash setups might be a great ideal, but in many real world situations it just can't be done, so the on-camera bounced & flagged P-TTL flash is the next best thing.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
01-10-2019, 03:44 AM
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And thanks for keeping the discussion going .....I always keep trying to focus more on the taking of flash photographs, rather than the endless talk about what radio triggers to buy and then how to get them working! We're swimming against the tide though with this one ....
I don't think the LED catchlight was on, no, and it's always worth trying, you're right. The advantage over the tradional white panel type is of course it continues to work during swivel bounced situations, the best ones! I have not done much testing with the catchlight on, but my impression is that it's rather subtle, shall we say. ..... Perhaps too subtle. No doubt it's effect will increase at higher ISOs and wider aperture.
I am really looking forward to a K1 one day (after my lottery win or Pension payout!) precisely in order to utilize flash at high ISOs, in particular to allow better ambient /flash mixing indoors in low light, so I'm with you on that one
With this shot here I kept it at max sync speed to control those sun highlights on the walls .... It's strange, but going to HSS indoors seems to break a rather strong psychological barrier .....
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
01-08-2019, 01:44 AM
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Thanks guys, glad you saw it, and let's hope it can encourage more Pentax photographers here to use flash to take control over the contrast and exposure balancing of their cake baking images!
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
01-07-2019, 07:06 PM
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A flash failing to fire for one shot gave me the idea to show this example:
How the ambient and flash exposures are independent, and how powerful a single on-camera flash can be in controlling extreme contrast indoors ....
The scenario was a bit of birthday cake baking, with bright sunshine streaming in from the windows behind. This sunlight was creating very bright highlights on the wall but leaving the table area and faces facing away from the window in deep shadow. So it was of course flash to the rescue, not direct flash, but on-camera sideways bounced and flagged ....
This is the equipment : K7, AF-540FGZII, "Flag thing" :
I had to meter for the ambient in order to control the very bright sun highlights which were going to be in the picture ..... if I didn't do this then these highlights could blow out and be an ugly distraction. So in Manual mode I fixed the settings at ISO400 / F8.0 / 1/180th, which just brought the sun highlights under control .... here is the shot without the flash, showing the extreme contrast in this sort of situation, and of course it demonstrates how difficult contrast control would be without flash ....
Then of course its flash to the rescue, with the on-camera flagged AF-540FGZII in P-TTL mode, the light being bounced to the right of the camera position into the walls and coming back onto the left side of my sons face ..... (my daughters whole face is illuminated more evenly because she is turned more towards the light source) ....
The result is an evenly balanced exposure mixing the ambient highlights and flash covered areas, taking care of the extreme contrast challenges in the scene. The angle of the bounce I hope gives a natural impression as the direction of the flash light appears to come from the brightly lit wall area ....
I hope this will prompt some more Pentax Users to try out some bounced flagged flash indoors when needing to take control over contrast, and when combining ambient and flash exposures will deal with dynamic range challenges. Hope you find it useful 
Nigel
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