LENSA.CO.UK

Today is probably the day we start to get serious. Uuu.. Sound scary eh? We are warming up for some clear cut tutorial on the use of speedlite. Rock on!

What you need

• Digital SLR
• Speedlite
• Subject / Object / Model
• Study lamp (only to be used for the machine model – not for the lego)

What you will produce

(Click image for larger preview)

Settings

Now here is the cool part of it. Pay attention to the diagram.

From the diagram above, the actual setting is that the speedlite is attached to the camera. But for the sake of showing the light that will bounce off the wall, we detached it and put it in such position and angle. The study lamp isn’t pointing directly at the model but just enough to give some yellowish environment. Preferably, you do it in a room that do not have any other light source than the study lamp.

Theory

From the theory of producing such picture, we use one light as a bouncer and another as the general light or in our terms the mood / atmosphere.

From the picture above the idea is so that the light that bounce from the wall will light the upper part of the model while darken the bottom part. Notice the mood that we anticipated and it works fine on this picture. It is not that perfect but once you have got the knack of it, you will produce something better than this.

Other example

For the lego model we took above, the have eliminated the lighting for the mood. We use the same setting as previous and the light bounce is more prominent. Generally, the concept of bouncing the light is used by most photographer to do two main jobs:

• soften the light on the subject
• creating new position of light source

Though, both of these jobs can be replaced with other photographic equipments. So, what don’t you try and share your picture on our flickr group. See you there!

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