I like the white card for ceiling bounce, the white card becomes illuminated and fills shadows in the eyes. Position your subject near the bounce surface for optimum side lighting, 3-6 feet (1-2 meters) is best. There was window light coming through behind him. I used a clear bounce card bounced against a yellowish wall in a hotel lobby (you can see the wall color behind him). This is my nephew, Jacob, an avid lacrosse player that’s excited to be playing on the JV team. It is easy to flip the flash from bounce flash to direct flash to see the results. Scout for a good bounce surface and move your subject(s) to the area to create the optimum lighting setup. Don’t restrict your creativity to only white surfaces a yellowish wall will create a warming tone, blueish walls will be reflect a cool tone. I like a clean white bounce surface, glossy is better because it reflects more light. What is the ambient light and what is the bounce surface? I just mentioned ambient light above.įor best results the bounce surface should be 1-2 meters (3-6 feet) from the flash. There should be 2 questions to ask yourself before you put a bounce card on your camera. Sony needs to add a custom minimum shutter speed when using Auto ISO. With rock solid hand holding skills, images at 1/30 or 1/40 sec are possible, beware shutter speeds can drop to impossible levels like 1 or 2 seconds. You can use the Rear or Slow Sync but keep in mind the shutter speeds will be set according to ambient light. The camera will be set to 1/60 sec shutter or faster and blur from handholding won’t be a problem. Should I use the Fill, Rear Curtain or Slow Sync flash setting? The best setting to use for the flash bounce cards is the Fill flash setting. It is easy to experiment and compare the 0 vs. Of course, if you’d like it won’t hurt to try +3 compensation. In most cases the small flash will already be firing at full power at the 0 setting unless you have bright ambient light. Should I crank the dial to +3 flash compensation (via Menu setting) when using the flash bounce cards? Cranking the flash compensation up to +3 with the flash bounce card will usually not make a difference. Try setting the ISO to 800 and letting the flash do the work. The other extreme is when the ambient light is too dim, if the camera is in AUTO ISO it will respond by increasing ISO to higher levels and the image may be unacceptable. Your camera has a maximum flash sync of 1/160 second, M mode or S mode is needed to control the shutter speed. Try increasing the shutter speed to darken the ambient light and bring out the flash effect. If you are not getting the side lighting from your flash you had hoped for, the ambient light may be too bright or the ambient light may be directional and fill in the shadow side of the face. I did some touch up processing and used Alien Skin to enhance the contrast and color.Īmbient light matters. It is possible for the ambient light to be too bright or too dim for a good flash bounce image. The white balance is nearly incandescent, I manually set it to 3400K rather than true incandescent 2850 K. This image was taken with the amber bounce card near a small mirror on the wall. The subject exposed by the amber will be rendered daylight balanced and any background daylight will be rendered cool blue. Check your image data after a few shots.įor the Amber Bounce Card use the “ FLASH” white balance to create a warm toned image. Avoid AUTO white balance, otherwise the Amber warming cast will be “corrected.” The White and Clear card do not create a intentional color cast so it would be ok to use AUTO white balance OR Flash white balance.įor a creative lighting effect use the “ Incandescent” white balance with the Amber Bounce Card. M mode gives you complete control to set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO.įor flash photography ideally you want your camera to shoot around 1/60 second, a wide open aperture and ISO200 – 1200. However if you want to control the settings use M manual mode. These modes work well if you don’t care to be technical about camera setup. In P, S and A mode your camera chooses what it thinks are the best settings and these settings will work most of the time. With the camera in landscape orientation the flash is bounced off the ceiling and gives a softer lighting of the room.
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