Drink?
I wanted to test out my new Canon 580ex and threw a little strobist setup together. A 580ex snooted behind and left of the glass. I shot it at 1/250 @ f/9 to black out the background.
Making your photos more flashy
Okay, I admit it, I didn’t believe David Hobby (Strobist.com) that spending a few hundred bucks on an off-camera flash setup would provide more bang for your buck than a new lens. I reasoned that with the absolutely sick high ISO performance of the new Nikons combined with a fast lens the flash was on its way out. Here’s where that falls flat. Although you can probably handhold a f/1.2 lens at 12K ISO in pretty much pitch black, you have no control of the light.
With a simple off camera flash setup you have a huge gamut of possibilities in front of you. First, you can take simple portraits to a whole new level. Getting the flash off axis will add a huge amount of depth and interest to an otherwise flat shot. Second, you can highlight points of interest and direct a viewers eye with great precision. Finally, for action photography there is no substitute. You stop action and get your subject to pop in a way a fast lens never can.
The best part is that it is actually pretty easy with digital backs. Running a flash in full manual off camera isn’t any more difficult than using FEC with TTL on camera. Just meter the scene to get the background exposure you like (usually about 2 stops darker than your subject), and set the flash power approximately where you think it should be and chimp away at the power setting to get it about right and adjust you aperature and shutter to fine tune the whole scene on the fly. With a bit of practice you get pretty comfortable with the whole process. Hobby provides a more detailed explanation on his blog, but really you don’t need to get bogged down in the details–just chimp away and get something you like.
This portrait of Chester, my mom’s Newfoundland, was done simply with one off camera flash. Shooting Chester in a corner, I was able to blowout any detail in the background and get a nice bounce to fill in the left side of the shot.