Birthday invitation part 2: the shot

So we got to the park and I had to rush to catch the last rays of sunset. I pulled out my lightstand, attached a convertible umbrella in shoot-through mode. I found a tree with some sunlit grass in the background and positioned the light stand near the tree and tried to cajole our son into running around the tree into the direction I wanted. But he was just running everywhere and wasn't anywhere near the position I was thinking of.

With time running out, we tried to improvise and just went for a less specific shot of him near the tree. Before taking the shot, I made sure I was in RAW mode to give me maximum latitude for postprocessing. I set ISO at 200 as an approximation of what I thought to be the appropriate ISO for the amount of light available. I set the metering mode to matrix, and set the exposure mode to Program because I was in a hurry. I wanted the umbrella to be the key and the ambient to the be the fill, so I
1. set exposure compensation to -1.3 stops
2. set flash exposure compensation to +1 stop.
With the Nikon flash system, the exposure comp affects the flash metering as well, so to keep the flash exposure normal, I would have had to add +1.3 stops. However, I intentionally underexposed by 1/3 of a stop to avoid blown highlights.

It would have also been possible to use the ambient as key and the flash as fill, but that combination would have made the background less saturated with color.

Straight out of the cam, the shot needed improvement.


With respect to composition, I was a bit surprised, because I usually make a conscious effort not to put the subject in the exact middle, but that's where his face was. Too bad - it would have been nicer to see his shoes... The colors were also off - not at all what the scene looked to my eyes. (Just a couple of minutes of postprocessing can fix that, as I discuss in my next entry.) But it was more or less ok.

With at least one "safe" shot in my pocket, I was free to experiment. We let our son play in the grass. With him running around, I all but abandoned the light stand. I was pleased with how some of the shots turned out after a little postprocessing.




I liked the light in this one, but shutter speed was way too slow, so the image came out blurry. Mental note to bump up ISO next time.

Bathroom light

So we planned our son's invitation picture and we were going to take the picture at the park but decided to take it in the bathroom instead. Jk. This isn't the next entry in that series...

I was just experimenting with our bathroom window light. The window is above our shower enclosure and from that angle has a light direction that is commonly used in paintings. I think it's an interesting source of continuous light to observe the effect of changing light direction as I move my head and body in relation to it. And our shower door can act as a diffusing panel as well! My wife just confirmed her suspicion that she married a nutcase. :)

Birthday part 1: Invitation Picture

Our son's having his birthday soon. Our first photo assignment was the picture for his invitation. Here's the picture we ended up using:

The general steps I followed to get to the final result were:

• idea
• execution
• postprocessing.

IDEA

It all begins with intention. Nothing complicated in this case. Just wanted to convey a sense of cuteness. The other intent was to echo the theme of the birthday, which will be at Rainforest Cafe.

My wife came up with the brilliant idea of having a picture of him peeking from behind a tree. With that concept in mind, I started visualizing the shot. I wanted the tree to be on the left side, with him leaning out from behind the tree with a mischievous, teasing smile. He would be in the tree's shade but illuminated by a soft light source from the right, and the grass behind them would be in backlit sunlight. We had a park near our house that I thought would have the right kind of background.

I thought of how we could take the shot. With our son in the shade, it would hopefully be easy to control the quality of the light on our son. To get a soft light I thought about using the sb-800 behind a shoot through umbrella on a light stand from a higher angle so that the direction of light would look somewhat natural. I don't have a softbox with grid but if I did, I would've tried that instead. As for the ratio, I was thinking of using the umbrella as key and underexposing ambient by 1 or 2 stops to act as fill.

The day of the shot, we dressed up our son in red, which I thought would contrast nicely with the green grass. I got home just in time to get to the park a little more than an hour before sunset, i.e., close to the magic hour.

So that was the idea and planning stage of taking this shot. The end result isn't what I had originally envisioned but I think it turned out ok. I'll take about execution and postprocessing in my next entries.

H2U indoors

Part 1 of this series here.

When I want soft, directional light, I like to bounce light against walls behind me or to the side (I learned to bounce flash this way from www.planetneil.com). Usually the reflective surface of the walls is relatively large, producing soft light. Sometimes it's just not possible to bounce the flash this way, even indoors, for any number of reasons. The walls could be too far away, the walls could be too dark, or they have a strange color. Sometimes, bouncing off walls illuminates a larger area than I intend.

When bouncing from walls is not practical or desirable, I've gotten soft directional light from an H2U:

Nikon D80, Tamron 28-75, 1/200, f/2.8, ISO 400, exposure mode: shutter priority, metering mode: evaluative, flash: i-TTL. IIRC, exposure comp 0, flash exposure comp 0.

I was holding the h2u with my left hand approx. 45 degrees from the subject. I intended to use the h2u as key light, so I set shutter speed to sync speed, which maximizes the flash's ability to overpower the ambient. The flash was on i-TTL, triggered by CLS. Because this was on TTL, the way to increase the ratio of ambient to flash would have been to use a slower shutter speed, a higher ISO, or a larger aperture. Vice-versa to decrease ambient.

I also experimented with the h2u for quick setups without a light stand. In these examples, I
wanted to light from the side for a little drama. I just placed the umbrella roughly to side of the subject (not handheld anymore :) ). I liked the resulting effect of lighting from the side, but in retrospect I should have allowed more ambient light.

In the shots above, I also used the popup flash at -2 flash exposure compensation just to give a bit of lift to the shadows that would be caused by the light from the side.

Setup shots:

Handheld umbrella - an excellent light modifier

I've tested what I think is a very useful light modifier - a handheld umbrella.  I'm not claiming to be the first to come up with the concept. Renowned photographer Bob Krist mentioned it in his blog in April 2009. Here's my preferred implementation of the handheld umbrella concept, which I'll call H2U for short (pardon the crappy pictures of the device):

I used the following components:
umbrella - Westcott double-fold 43" convertible umbrella  (got mine here)
umbrella swivel (got mine here)
Nikon AS-19 speedlight stand (the one that came with the SB-800)
and the flash (SB-800).

The umbrella swivel I have has two studs - one male and one female. I switched them from their normal positions to use the male stud on the tilting portion of the swivel. I connected the stud to the bottom of the AS-19, which has a tripod socket. Next I tilted the swivel to as close as 90 degrees as possible (note: the AS-19 is positioned sideways, with the Nikon logo facing away from the swivel handle). Finally I connected the SB-800 (with the head positioned to bounce vertically) to one of the cold shoes for an SB-R200. When all is done, the SB-800 is positioned very close to the axis of the umbrella, and I can use the non-tilting part of the swivel as a sort of handle. If I need to use the umbrella with a lightstand in a jiffy, I can do that via the female stud on the non-tilting portion (although the umbrella won't be tiltable).

The advantage of using an AS-19 is that it has a receptacle for the SB-800's locking pin, so I feel it's more secure. Without an AS-19, it's possible to use instead the cold shoe that came with the swivel (hopefully your swivel was supplied with one). The problem is that my cold shoe won't hold the SB-800 in place. If I had to do it this way, I would position the SB-800 with the back against the umbrella's handle to sort of prevent the flash from sliding off.

Advantages:
Larger light source (hence can produce softer light) than most portable modifiers (I'm talking about the various forms of plastic modifiers that can be attached to a flash.
Once the components are assembled, deploying the system is pretty fast - you just open the umbrella.
If a collapsible umbrella is used, it's reasonably portable when folded.
Cost - If you already have an umbrella, you probably also have a swivel and could assemble it without buying anything new.

Disadvantages:

• Sometimes gets attention from onlookers.
• Even when collapsed, it's bigger than a typical modifier.
• Hard to use from camera right.

So how well does this modifier work? I tested it in one of the most demanding lighting situations - outdoors, midday sun in summer, no clouds. Here are the shots I got:

Example 1


Example 2


In both shots, I asked my wife to stand in a shade (to avoid having to overpower the very bright ambient). I held the H2U camera right as key light. I triggered the flash with CLS. I shot in RAW to give me as much leeway as possible. The shots aren't great but I think they prove the usefulness of the H2U. I think the end result is close enough to what I had in mind in terms of lighting (although I had to do quite a bit of postprocessing to try to save the background - and I am unskilled at postprocessing).

Ideally, if I had a flash with sufficient power (and/or a camera with a really high sync speed), I could have brought down the ambient exposure by 1 or 2 stops, then used sufficient flash power to light the subjects. Like this shot by Neil van Niekerk. I tried this but the shot came out underexposed. To be fair, I had the flash with the wide angle diffuser to cover the entire umbrella, and I was trying to use the reflective underside of the umbrella without putting the black cover (though I'm not sure how much the black cover would have helped). Maybe next time I'll try a more efficient non-convertible reflective umbrella and I'll zoom the flash head. It would also have been nice to put the subject at the edge of the shade to use the sun as rim light, but here I opted to prioritize the composition. And my wife was getting impatient. :)

You may have noticed the light is coming from the camera right. I held the H2U with my right hand while I took the shot holding the camera with my left hand, pressing the shutter with my ring finger. It's not so easy to do that and depending on your camera/lens combination, that might not be feasible. An alternative is to use a remote (holding the remote and H2U with your right hand, and holding the camera with your left).

I also tried the H2U indoors to simulate situations where bouncing is for some reason not possible such as really dark or really far/high walls and ceilings. I'll discuss how those shots turned out here.

Update 4/17/10: I recently tested a handheld convertible umbrella against a handheld softbrella for efficiency.  These are the results.
Update 4/25/10: here is a list of small umbrellas that are convenient for use as a handheld umbrella.

Update 5/4/10: I reviewed what may be the ideal handheld umbrella here.