Neil Van Niekerk opened my eyes to the benefit of one of the most useful and accessible flash modifiers you can use.
A sub $1 bit of 2mm black foam, about the size of a paperback, a hair band and you have a flagging panel.
This means you can shoot an on camera flash like a modified studio light.
How?
It works like this.
Flash light (i.e. light) is linear, which means it is stronger closer, proportionately weaker as you get further away (this is the inverse square law). This means if you photograph a row of people, front to back, you will likely get the middle well exposed, nearer ones over exposed and further away ones under exposed. This can range from nuked white to cave black over a relatively short distance.
It also casts shadows if fired straight which can cause problems with deeper subjects.
The black foamy thing (BFT), allows the flash to fire away from the subject, with only the light bouncing back being used (combined with ambient light), the flag panel blocking the unwanted “bleeding” of light on the subject. Bleeding means that the bulk of the light is bounced, but often too much (maybe 20-40%) still goes straight causing the problems outlined above.
The environment becomes one enormous, directional light modifier. Directional and big are both good.
This image shot with straight flash would be a mess of blown out forground subjects, or underexposed background and have a sharp drop-off, meaning the background would be effectively black. So blown-out white, to ok, to deep black. Not attractive or even predictable. The image above has nice feathered drop-off.
The balloon in the foreground could have undone this image if the flash was fired straight. If the camera and flash had metered off them, the boys would have been lost to darkness. If the boys had been properly exposed, the balloons may have blown out un-recoverably to become a blob of distraction.
There is a problem though.
Sometimes the bounce you have to just go with, has to come from above as there is not anything beside or behind you to bounce off or there is something blocking the bounced light. Bouncing from above can cause deep shadows under brows, so you get black eyes with bright noses and hair (it does give nice cheek bone structure though).
This is effectively “butterfly” light, which often needs some fill just for that reason.
A decently exposed image, but a little heavy around the eyes.
For on-the-go photographer who cannot set up modifiers on stands etc, there are two fixes for this.
For this dinner on Saturday, I used a white foamy thing, sometimes as a front flag, which seesm to work the same as the BFT, but often I used it as a normal front bounce.
Obviously a no-go for above bounce.
Open and bright, which is much more pleasant than the heavier look. If you get the ambient light right, there is often free “hair” or “rim” lighting on hand.
Normally I would have used the front flag here, but the white surrounds filled in the whole group, making the image balanced. There is a hint of shadow cast on rear subjects, but the width of the WFT, which is about 6-8” across*, seems to see around corners quite well.
The second fix is to get the flash off the camera, using a hand held unit fired remotely from the camera. This extra flexibility allows you to shoot the flash from further away than the camera, around an obstruction or even off the floor, thus creating a better angle.
Other factors come into play, such as ambient light balance, which is controlled by the shutter speed. Most of these used 1/60-90th which gave me a warm backdrop, slightly darker than the flash lit foreground, but for dance floor shots I used 1/250th to help arrest “ghosting” which is where there is enough ambient light to create a movement blurred exposure around your sharply captured flash image.
A classic flash issue with fringe blurred movement (girl in white). The 1/250th ambient exposure (maximum flash sync), was not fast enough to fully freeze subject motion creating a soft fringe around the much faster flash exposure. I actually like it sometimes, but it does not always work.
Finally a call out to the magnificent little EM10 mk2, which was my backup on the night, so it was called into service when my 2x YN560’s both failed to fire on the EM1.2. This seems to be a thing as the single contact pin units will not fire on the G9’s either, but the dedicated remote unit works fine on all of them?!
I did the entire night with one amateur grade camera, the Leica 15mm or 12-40 both wide open, with a YN560 IV manual flash and a $2 modifier. The flash and sensor combo gives me a couple of workable stops if I miscalculate, so about 1/64 to 1/16 power at ISO 400 is my workable range. The average is 1/32 power at 1/90th, f1.7 or f2 at ISO 400 or ISO 800 at f2.8 as a starting point.
When you get the hang of it, manual is much more reliable than TTL in this type of environment and much lighter on batteries because TTL, especially with high speed sync uses multiple flash pulses to measure and meter, where manual just uses one. consistent blip.
Concerns about cold white light against a warmer ambient background were swept away by the lovely warmth of the EM10 sensor and Leica lens combo. This is just one of those winning pairs, which combined with the 12-40 Oly, 45 and 75mm’s give me an any event kit.
No battery changes, no miss-fires, no over heating issues and at the end of the night, the Eneloop Pro batteries were still showing all bars! One day if I have time, I may test the Eneloops, but at working strength of 1/32 to 1/16 power settings I am guessing I will have to waste 2-3000 flash fires before they fail.
I missed about 50 out of 1200 due to slight focus misses, something I could have avoided if I had activated the focus assist light, but supplied 435 shots, enough to get all 500 students one way or another.
*The BFT and WFT panels are bought in large sheets of soft 2mm foam, sourced from any costume, stationry or fabric shops and cut to size/shape to suit. I usually cut mine into 6x8” rectangles, then trim the short sides with a fairly gentle corner trim, helping me attach the panel to the flash. The foam is flexible with reasonable “shape memory”, so you can flare out or close in the cone as needed. Two together can even make a snoot. For hairbands I use bigger, softer ones, often with a thin one as a safety. Other options are to cut some holes in the panel for more light escape.