Assignment 2: Position and Distance

Another evening, another assignment (and the realization that this pace will probably not last much longer). This time, we play with distance, rather than angle. Having an engineering and physics background, I had no problem with the theory of what was to come. I had not, however, ever implemented this. If you recall, I'm working with a one trick pony flash, which made the distance adjustments a bit more than I was expecting. Rather than being able to dial my flash power down, I was at the mercy of my aperture. This ended up being less of a problem than I initially thought, although it did mean my composite image was not consistently focused due to the wide range of apertures (f22 to f2.4) and short distance between the camera and the objects (about 1 foot).

To paraphrase the point of the lesson, notice how the subject remains relatively equally exposed in all three slices, while there is a rather dramatic change in the background. Flash to subject distance increases from left to right. On the left, the distance between the flash and the subject is about half of the distance between the flash and the backdrop. This makes the flash significantly more powerful on the subject due to "the rule which must not be named, let alone explained". Inversely, on the right, the flash is "very far" (that's a technical term) from both the subject and the background so the small difference between their respective lengths does very little for the light intensity.

All in all, this was a good lesson and I can see how this will become a very powerful tool in the future. I do, however, look forward to repeating it once I acquire a more flexible flash unit such as a used Nikon SB-24, you know, one with knobs and buttons that actually do something.