Flash Techniques

Using Flash in Near Darkness

Last year for Loy Krathong I cruised the same klong in the same area and dedicated myself to not using a flash. This means I was shooting at ISO 3200 which was the cameras limit and shooting wide open at either F2.8 with my 70-200/2.8 IS zoom, or F1.8 with my 20mm wide angle prime. The images were ok, but challenged. This year I was determined to do something different trying for the same effect but with a much higher image quality.

To achieve this I set the camera for manual mode and used a wireless portable strobe in manual mode. This effectively gave me a optimum working distance of 15-20 feet, and I could push the exposure in RAW out to about 30 feet with good results.

What, no automatic flash? I have never met an automatic flash I can count on and I’ve had many including Nikon SB800’s and Canon 580ex’s. I still own and sometimes use the 580ex’s. Used in carefully selected controlled environments they do indeed work in automatic mode. However, they are very limited in power output, recycle time, and light quality when compared to my Quantum 5d. You can look at it here.

The Quantum Qflash’s are awesome professional units with an array of accessories and options and most first timers study their site for a long time before even knowing what to order to get started. The light quality is outstanding and I use these all the time for impromptu model shoots while on the road, weddings, and outdoor portraits. A great professional tool!

You can always tell when you have a great light quality when the skin tones of different races appear correct.

How dark was it out there? So dark that with the naked eye you could usually see only shapes, but not detail, no eyes, and there was no way for the camera to autofocus because it was just too dark for the autofocus sensors. Looking through the viewfinder all you could see was dark shapes and movement.

So how did we focus? I placed the sensor on the candle flames and let the camera lock focus automatically and then with my hand on the manual focus override gently pulled the focus in the desired direction while holding down the shutter release in a burst of 4-6 images. One or two of these images turned out to be in focus or very close to in focus and usable. This might sound haphazard but indeed it’s very close to the technique I use when covering live events on the streets. You might get 4-5 images which are unusable, but you can easily live with the 1-2 images which are. It’s just another way a DSLR becomes more usable in the field than an SLR film camera.

Each time we got to an interesting scene I’d ask the sampan pilot to move within range, slow down, turn the boat sideways if possible, and then I’d frame my shot, notice that my guest playing portable light stand was locked in as well, center the center AF sensor (the center AF sensor is the most sensitive of your AF sensors) on the candle flame and lock in AF, and then manually “pull” the focus either forward or backwards depending on where the main subjects were in relation to the flame.

Using this technique I was able to shoot at ISO 200, 1/100^th, and I’d manually vary the aperture between F2.8-5.6 depending on the estimate distance. The flash was set to half power to ensure a quick recycling time for the bursts of images I’d take.

Once dialed in it was just a matter of looking for the right scenes and firing off a burst of 4-6 images.

By limiting the power I limited the range of the flash, ensuring I was illuminating the subjects, but at the same time not the background. A high percentage of shots were my reward for this technique with an unusually high image quality for this type of shooting.