Night sky and fill flash = ....

WesternGuy · Nov 16, 2012

Anders, thanks for the explanation. It is most helpful.

WesternGuy

daymon · Nov 16, 2012

Great photos. They show us how small we are in the world

Compaq · Nov 16, 2012

It's incredible how small we are, and how some feel superior to others.

thiha · Dec 30, 2012

how about ur gf photo?the jump one.
she already stand in front of the camera and u shoot.then u start lighting and she jump.and after jumping
she go outside of the frame.right?
i want to shoot like that. pls explain in detail.

Compaq · Dec 31, 2012

Remember that the flash pretty much freezes her motion.

I set up the shot at f/2.8 for 30 seconds. She stands in the frame where she shall jump. I count to three, at which time she jumps and I fire the flash manually. I pressed the shutter release at around two-ish. When she lands, she moves out of the frame, and we all wait happily for the shutter to close.

It took two or three tries to get this right - mostly due to my poor flash timing

magdalene · Jan 8, 2013

Compaq said:
I can try to explain in a little more detail what I did, as some are interested I'm always happy to help with what limited knowledge I do possess!

I set the aperture to f/2.8, which is as wide as I can go on my Tokina 11-16/2.8. I wanted as much light as I could possibly gather with the lens, to get as much detail in the sky as possible. Secondly, I set the shutter time to thirty seconds. There's a two-point balance here, consisting of (1) the amount of light I want and (2) stars starting to "streak" due to a long exposure time. I chose thirty seconds, because I knew, from experience, that this is pretty much as long as I can go before the stars streak too much. You can see a tiny bit of streaking in the shots here, already. Thirty seconds gives me more light than, say, 20 seconds - I wanted to get as much light as possible.

The third thing I needed to decide, was the ISO. I chose ISO-800. Not too much noise, yet I get more detail from the light gathered (to say it like that). ISO-100 would give me "cleaner" shots, but with less detail in the sky.

Lastly, I had my flash. If I didn't use it, the light would be much, much darker (Image 1). I have an old Vivitar flash, on which power settings can't be directly changed. I just tried what it looked like from a certain distance, and just used that for all the shots. Seeing as the shutter speed was thirty seconds, I had plenty of time to move around to get the angle I wanted. In addition to this, I wouldn't really matter if I walked in the frame. I would be very dark, and ghost when I walked. If I stayed in the same place for long, then I might have appeared on the final image as some weird blurry shadow.

As for the angle I used, I chose one that didn't bring too many harsh shadows in the frame, either on the field or on the house itself. I made sure to be in front of the tripod, or else it would cast a shadow.

It's all just basic reflections of how light works in photography Maybe this helped some!

Image 1

Unedited RAW file converted to JPEG using Irfan View.

Did you use a built in flash on your camera or a flash that you attach? Thanks for the info I am very inexperienced. love the crispness of your photos!

ilscuro · Jan 8, 2013

Love these photo's, well done

Compaq · Jan 8, 2013

Fun to see that this thread is still getting visitors. How, I can't explain

I used an off camera flash. An old Vivitar flash that I held in my hand, not coupled to the camera. I fired it some meters away from the camera, somewhere in the 30 seconds time frame.