In this post I’m going to walk you through how, with only one external flash, in a normal room, you can manage to make a photo that looks like it was shot in a studio. Hopefully you will get a better grasp of light and how it works in the process. You’re going to need to know how to use your camera in manual mode. This post is about light,  not “the basics of using a camera,” and you’re going to need a way to fire your flash off-camera. Go here for details on how to fire any recent Nikon flash off-camera. The rest of you will want to go here for tons of different ways. If you’re on a tiny budget and you don’t mind a little hit to reliability then I would recommend this4 Channel Wireless Hot Shoe Flash Trigger & Receiver Set for a quick way to get started.
If you’ve got those things covered then lets move on.

In keeping with the low-budget theme of this post, I’ll be shooting in pretty much the most low-budget place possible:

As you can see, this is about the furthest thing from a studio around. There’s really not much to work with in here, so we’ll be shooting in front of the door. Its sorta off-white but its close enough for our purposes. If we just stick the subject in front of the door, using just the ambient light in the room, we get something like this:

The background has the shadow of the subject on it, and even the parts unaffected by the shadow are a murky grey. The light doesn’t flatter the subject at all either, there are nasty shadows, bags under her eyes and no catch lights.

So here is where flash comes in. For these shots I’ll be using one Nikon sb-600 fired by the pop-up on a d90 to keep it simple.

Basically, I;m going to put my flash behind the subject, and below waist level, pointing up at the part of the door directly behind the subject, like so:

I’m not going to post the specific settings that I used for my flash here, as the settings will vary for each situation. The key is to set the flash power up until the background goes white and the shadow of the subject goes away, but not too high as to cause flare. So play around until you find a happy medium. Since the flash is pointed at the background instead of the subject, you’re going to use primarily the ambient light in the room to light the subject. Still, you can reasonably expect some light from the flash bouncing around the room to provide a little fill and lighten up those shadows on the subjects face.

This is what I’m getting at this stage:

So, we’ve fixed the background problem, its white, theres no more shadow on it. Its getting better. If you’re really lazy then you could stop here, but I’m going to experiment with some cheap ways to make it even better.

The background is fine, what needs work now is the light hitting the subject. Right now its just the ambient light helped out a little by spill from the background flash. In this situation it’s not THAT bad, but in many cases the ambient light isn’t bright enough, is to harsh, or in the wrong place, or even an entirely different color. I want something I can replicate reliably. Ideally you would bring up your shutter speed to stop the ambient light from affecting your photo and run another flash through an umbrella or softbox onto the subject for a nice soft key light.

The problem is you’ve only got one off-camera flash unit, and thats already being used. This is where we need some creative thinking.

The rest should be done tomorrow. Let me know what you think of it so-far.

Been busy as hell recently so that post on off-camera flash will have to wait till tomorrow. again.

in the meantime I leave you with this photo by NV6V on Flickr which I thought was extremely interesting. Selective coloring backwards, and without Photoshop? Weird.

Something I always reccomend to photographers wondering what gear to buy is a small flash. Even if it’s only used on camera, one flash unit can be an incredible help in many kinds of situations. However an area that I notice people are often hesitant to get into, is using their flash off-camera.

One common misconception is that you need more than one flash unit to get any decent light with off-camera flash. While having additional flash units does help, there are an incredible amount of things you can do with only one. Using some simple workarounds you can often make it look like there are more then one.

Here’s a list the 5 ways that I would most often use my flash back in the days when I only had one. but first you need to get your flash to fire (uh, flash) off the camera. Any relatively new Nikon speedlight and dslr combo will have the ability to fire without any additional hardware. For more information on how to get your flash to work off camera,  go here or here or google it. Also, keep in mind that many of these setups can be done with any type of light source, and aren’t strictly limited to small flashes. If you’ve got some extremely powerful normal lights lying around, you can use those as well. Feel free to send me an email or comment if you’ve got questions.

1. Backlight

One flash behind and/or slightly to the side of your subject can do wonders. The high contrast, the flare, the halos, I love it all. If I’ve only got one flash with me and I want to spice up an photo a little, this is my go-to. Just spock (put) a flash behind your subject, experiment with power settings, and watch the magic happen.

Examples:

2. Fill

It’s possible do this with on-camera flash as well, but I prefer it off camera for more consistency. I use this often, but its probably the most noticeable at concerts when all the lights are wonky colors and I want the subject to be in a normal colored light. Direct or bounced depending on if I want it soft or hard.

3. Background light + Key (Your main light)

The photo ad below was lit with one flash, an sb-27. I didn’t have a special background, its just pieces of white paper laid out on a table with a piece of desk top glass laid over the paper, and a white wall. Originally I had the flash hitting the background only to make it pure white, and used the ambient light to expose the foreground. However I didn’t like the quality of the light I was getting from the foreground, so I added a reflector in front, to reflect the light that was coming from the background onto the foreground.

If that went over your head I’ll be doing an entire post on achieving this look (with people too, not just products) with only one flash.

4. Creepy man in the dark.

Essentially the opposite of the light setup above, this time you try to light the background as little as possible. Bounce the flash off a wall, and keep the subject close to the light source.

I would recommend using a reflector for some fill if you want a little more of a humane look.

5. Emphasis on something

Pretty self explanitory, you light one element with the flash to draw attention to it. The power of the flash in relation to the ambient light will determine how powerful the effect is.

All done

So there you go, five ways to use one flash to achieve dramatically different effects. I hope to go into a little more detail on each of them in future posts so stay tuned. If you, like many people, already have a flash unit, I would encourage you to find a way to fire it off camera, and start experimenting. You will be surprised at how much of a difference a little well planned use of light can make. Like mister McNally says, “light is the language of photography, and we need to know how to speak eloquently.”

If dont have an external flash, and youre looking to buy something that will hugely affect the quality of your photos, then that is what I would reccomend. You dont need a high end flash like an sb-900 or 580ex if youre just starting with off-camera flash. For Nikon users I would definitely recommend the Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras, that link takes you to where I would buy it from too. If you own a nikon d-slr then it will work right away, with no extra hardware needed, off camera.

I will leave you to ponder.