The flash diffusers such as the Stofen omni-bounce, Gary Fong Lightsphere and the like, are great little gadgets that can help create soft light in a small room, or a room with a low ceiling.

The fact is, these plastic devices that you attach to the end of your flash are not softening the light coming out of your flash.

Light itself is neither hard or soft. It’s photons flying through the air in a straight line. The only way to create softer shadows is to make the apparent size of the light source in relation to your subject larger. This can be done, for example with soft boxes and umbrellas placed near your subject. Another method, if you are indoors, is by bouncing the light up into the ceiling or into a wall, which will bounce back much larger light source than the small size of your on-camera flash.

You can also use these plastic flash diffusers to aid in softening the light indoors. What these attachments do, is send the light spraying out in all directions, which in turn, bounce off everything, causing light to fall upon your subject from many directions to produce the look of softer light.

Now, are you heading outside to shoot with on-camera flash? The first thing you should do is take your plastic diffuser off (if it’s attached), and shove it in your pocket, camera bag, or wherever else you feel like shoving it.

Contrary to popular belief, a piece of translucent plastic that scatters light in all directions without nearby surfaces to reflect the scattered light back into the scene, will not soften the light. A diffuser outdoors — a large majority of the time — simply wastes light, reduces range, slows recycle times and eats batteries.

The light that will hit your subject will be the light that starts at your flash and heads straight at your subject. All the other light spreading out in all other directions will not have anything to bounce back from and will just go to waste. If you think that bouncing off the clouds is worth a try, fahgettaboutit, that’s a lesson in futility.

Outdoors, use your on-camera flash as fill, and shoot direct. Your mileage may vary, but by setting your flash to ETTL mode with a FEC of -1 1/3 to -2, should yield some very nice results.

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Two local photographers, Russell Tracy and Dave Yoakum contacted me to come out to meet and shoot with them sometime. That time came last Thursday night at Fallston High School. Russell and Dave are practicing their off-camera techniques and this would be a good opportunity to learn from each other.

The Fallston gym, like most in Harford County, has very little room, and no balcony at the end of court which prevents getting our lights high and pointed parallel to the sidelines. We had to place the lights on the sides, which create too much crosslighting and harsh shadows.

When using strobes/flashes, ideally you want to over power the ambient light by 3 to 4 stops so that when you are shooting at your camera’s sync speed (typically 1/250 sec), the quick burst of light from the strobes is what freezes the action and not the shutter speed. I tried bouncing my 580EXs off the back wall to create a large light source, but my flashes, even on full power, could only muster about 2 stops over ambient. In a darker lit gym, this method would probably work, but Fallston’s ambient lighting is better than average.

I had to stick with direct light from the corners of the gym. I placed my flashes on my 7-foot light stands and set them each to 1/8 power, 28mm zoom and aimed them towards the top of the key.

Here are some samples from the night.

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Here in Maryland there is a light dusting of snow on the ground, temperatures in the high 20’s low 30’s. My wife and daughter are out to see a play, and my son is upstairs taking a nap. The only football game on right now is the Eagles/Giants game — yawn.

I’m bored.  What to do? I know, take some pictures of the Christmas ornaments on the tree we recently put up.

These shots were taken on a tripod with my 135 f/2.0 lens. ISO 200 and a tungsten WB. The average shutter speed was about a third of a second.

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The John Carroll Patriots wrestling team opened their home schedule against Boy’s Latin on Tuesday afternoon with a 56-18 win.

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This is the continuation from Part 1 of the wrestling team poster project done using a green screen. In part one, I explained how I used a green screen to put together a team picture.

The next stage was to provide some sample background images to be selected for the final poster.  I submitted for review, ten different images, from pastures to buildings, for potential candidates for the final poster. Coach Watson and his staff settled on the stormy clouds version. In addition, he let me know that one of the original wrestlers has transferred to another school and would need to be removed. With the removal of that wrestler, I then rearranged the other guys to balance it out.

Coach Watson wondered if I could add a bolt of lighting to the sky. I played around with Photoshop after Googling for help inspiration and technique from others. I personally like the poster without the lightning, but the coaches loved it, and wanted it included.

The final step was to add the text, and get the final OK.  Once approved, it was time to send the final image to the lab to print the posters.

This was a fun learning experience, and would gladly accept another project that could utilize the green screen.

In fact, I am going to start utilizing this technique for doing T&I (team and individual). No more ugly bleachers or gym stages in the backgrounds. Another benefit is that there is no need for everyone to wait around for the entire team to show up — I’m sure the parents will appreciate that aspect.

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If you are a sports photographer and frequently shoot high school night games of football, soccer, or lacrosse, you have probably experienced poor lighting.  Some of the newer fields have decent lighting, but a majority of the ones I visit are marginal at best.

Prior to Bel Air High School being remodeled, if I shot a game without flash on the old football field, I would usually come away disappointed with my results.  The light reading on that field was ISO 3200 f/2.8 1/250 on the best lit areas of the field. The team wears dark blue uniforms and shots from the endzone and sideline would be horrible, unless you shot at 1/60.

If you shoot at night with a flash sitting on-camera, you will end up with a majority of your subjects with red eye or ghost (white) eye.  Pupils are dilated and the light from your flash is so close to the lens axis that red eye is unavoidable in that situation.   To use flash without getting red eye, the flash needs to be distanced from the lens axis.  One way would be to put the flash up high above your camera.  Well, in doing that, you being nimble and having the ability to move up and down the sidelines quickly is probably hindered.  What I do is put my flash below my camera. This allows me to move up/down the sidelines pretty much the same way I would without flash. The flash below keeps the weight low to the ground and doesn’t affect my shooting ability.

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To those that are regular readers of David Hobby’s Strobist website are intimately familiar with the motto, LESS GEAR, MORE BRAIN, BETTER LIGHT, however, that tagline has been recently replaced with LEARN TO LIGHT.   The enormous popularity of David’s website over the past two years has caused hundreds of thousands of photographers to take their on-camera flashes, off-camera and create awesome images using relatively inexpensive equipment.

With the knowledge he has given to the photographic community with regards to small flashes, David is now expanding his Strobist site to discuss the use of other lighting equipment — mainly studio strobes.

As David wrote in his post Birthdays, Heresies and Watt-Seconds:

I don’t care if they are using speedlights, Profotos or magnesium powder. Light is light. And we may as well be learning from the folks who are working at the highest levels.

Year three of Strobist should be filled with more interesting reading and learning.

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