Off-Cam Flash Technique
Upon learning Off-camera flash at PDP, I got so interested that I’m so into it now. I think this is my favorite part of photography (aside from studio lighting), when you can control the light using only the external flash. At first, it seemed difficult as I always get an overexposed result. But once I got used to it, I became more interested in exploring and improving it more.
On this post, I’ll show how to use a single off-cam flash effectively.
The photo below shows a silhouette when shooting under sunset. Or sometimes when against the light, a silhouette can be achieved (with a proper exposure).
On the second photo, I exposed the background because I want it to be shown clearly as part of the foreground. Of course, doing this will give the subject a silhouette effect.
So to make the subject come out, I used my “Nissin Di866″ flash. And to make it more dramatic, my flash was not directly attached to my camera’s hot-shoe. I asked a friend to hold the flash (you can do this if you don’t have a light stand) for me on a 45 degrees to the subject. It is a “Rembrandt” lighting style as you can see a small triangle on the cheek which is on the opposite side of the light. I asked the subject to move their head just slightly to the right to make this really work. With the exposure of f/10 aperture and 200 shutter speed, 200 ISO (or you can try the slowest ISO) and a flash setting of 1/16 on a 50mm range, the result was fantastic.
The last image shows the same result when shooting under sunrise. To make the flare come out, I exposed the background with a higher fnumber which is 11. My subject would have a 50% silhouette effect so I used my flash to expose my subject.
