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.

Assignment 1: Position and Angle

The first assignment is fairly basic, though not without it's own challenges for me. For starters, I'm working with an ancient and limiting flash, a Minolta Auto 128 that I'm not entirely certain whether or not it is functioning properly. It comes complete with a rotary dial calculator that as far as I can tell isn't actually attached to any electronics on the inside. (Not that I would dare ignore numerous warnings against opening up a flash...) but also comes with a M-Auto switch that also seems to accomplish nothing. In the end, it's basically a one trick pony, though seems to do the trick at about f5.6 and 10ft of separation. For Sync, I'm using the LumoPro Miniphone cable kit (available at http://mpex.com/strobist) so there's a 12' cable laying around, but thus far, that's not an issue. My light stand consists of my hand and a conveniently sized curtain rod for consistent height from the floor.

Now, onto the picture (click image to load it in Flickr):



My subject is everyone's favorite Blizzard plushie, the Wyvern Cub. I chose this first for it's top notch cuteness factor, as well as it's numerous curves and features that should help better demonstrate the assignment.

Obviously, the main goal of this exercise is to demonstrate how much more lighting control you gain by not limiting your flash to be "on-axis" with the camera. I was particularly surprised by how much of a difference there was even with just 30° of separation between the camera axis and the flash. The image very quickly moves from washed out and boring, to really showing some of the details of the subject, starting with the major features such as the nose. Moving to 60°, we start to get some definition around the folds in the ear and wings. At 90°, the mood starts changing with the harsh side light and relatively dim ambient fill on the shadows.

Overall, this has been a good starting experiment. While I knew the overall effect I would get going into it, I was still surprised and intrigued by the finer details that this exercise made apparent.