Don't laugh. I was a little short on available subjects today for my Lighting 102 assignment so I volunteered myself for a self-portrait. The idea of the assignment was to control and balance twilight and strobe light. And here's where we landed just as the sunset peaked:
40mm, 1/60th of a second, f/11, ISO 200, SB-800 camera left through mini-softbox at 1/8th power.
DD says it looks like I should be in a ski industry advertisement. I think that was a compliment.
This little exercise helped drive home the concept I mentioned before: Ambient light, in this case the sunset and clouds, is controlled by the combination of shutter speed and aperture. The flash, on the other hand, is controlled pretty much only by your aperture (assuming your shutter speed is at or below your camera's flash sync speed). On my camera, I can sync with my flash at any shutter speed at or lower than 1/500th of a second. So, I first took a few shots of the sunset and got it to a point where it was a little darker than it actually looked at the time (to create that cool ambiance). That happened to be 1/60th of a second at f/11. Then I turned on my flash and took a few shots, adjusting the flash output until my face looked reasonably well lit.
Then I thought, "Let's add a little drama to the sky..." so I upped the shutter speed to 1/200th of a second. This had absolutely no effect on the flash and exposure of my face because the flash goes off at about 1/10,000th of a second--easily within the time that the shutter was open. But, the faster shutter made the sky appear darker, simply because the shutter was open for less than half the time it was open for the previous shot.
40mm, 1/200th of a second, f/11, ISO 200, SB-800 camera left through mini-softbox at 1/8th power.
Ok, two questions:
1) Which shot do you like better?
2) How obvious is it that I haven't been on a pair of skis for over 10 years?
I like the sky in the second one, but your face looks better in the first one.
Posted by: marné | January 22, 2009 at 08:38 PM
Definately like the shot with the lighter sky at the top of the post. And Yes you do look like a poser. I might buy you as a nordic skier but definately not an extreme mountaineer skier, too clean shaven and not gruff enough.
Posted by: Aaron | January 23, 2009 at 09:10 PM
I prefer the first one, too.
If you're not careful with all this self-portraiture, you might end up changing your Facebook mugshot as much as CJ3.
Posted by: Sijbrich | January 25, 2009 at 05:55 PM