Technical Workshop: The Comic Strip Presents: 'Ming The Merciless'

Ambient light doesn't necessarily have to be daylight, it also includes other non-flashing existing light such as fluorescent bulbs, street lighting, and house-hold bulbs.

Today we continued work from last weeks workshop, 'The Comic Strip'. We continued the same procedure using flash & ambient light but instead of doing it outside we completed the task in the studio. We projected a an ambient light onto a white board and flash a separate light onto the model to create a balance. 

Our first task told us to get creative by mixing flash & ambient light together. We had to take a light reading (setting it to daylight on the light meter) of our ambient light to find the shutter speed for f/8. We then took another light reading (setting it to flash mode) and measured the flash light. The flash light's power needed to be adjusted to f/8. It took a while for us to get the flash power down, the power would either be too high or just above what we needed. The camera then needed to have an aperture set to f/8. When we took a look at our portrait, it was obvious that the flash and ambient light had mixed together to create a balanced light across the model. Afterwards we had to repeat the steps three times but using a faster shutter speed by one stop, then two stops, then three... 

As of readings, we received a reading of f/8. ISO at 400 for all images.

Ambient light 

Mixed flash and ambient light together - reading 1/20 s

Faster shutter speed by one stop - 1/40

Faster shutter speed by two stops - 1/80

Faster shutter speed by three stops - 1/60

Our second task was about getting creative with what we had just established but using a fill-in flash. For this task we needed to set a shutter speed that synced & arrange the flash on the same f-stop for equal power. This is the first shot we got. 

      Unfortunately the image caught reflection from the ambient light & the image is slightly blurry. Because the shutter speed was slower, it created a motion blur.

Next we put the flash one stop lower. Our starting aperture was f/16 because we couldn't get it any lower than f/8. The flash power needed to be equivalent to f/5.6 so that it's half as much light. As you can see from the image below the face is still half lit from the ambient light but is still partially light on the left side of the face where the flash light is.

Similar to task one I had to repeat the steps. We put the flash two stops lower using our starting aperture & set the flash power equivalent to f/4 so that it pumps out a quarter as much of light.

As you can see the ambient light is the most powerful light source in this image. The left side of the face is fairly dark in comparison to the flash having full power to the least. It's certainly a difference from the image above using half as much light to this image which is using a quarter amount of life.

You would increase flash output by one stop by either putting it down one whole number to get a darker response, or up a whole number to get a lighter response. This is our outcome of a one-stop increased flash output in relative to the ambient light. 

 Evaluation:

(i) What is the effect of using a faster shutter speed in the steps given & what happens to the background? Faster shutter speeds freezes movement and catches the light when flashed fully onto the model. The background becomes lighter.

(ii) What is the effect of reducing flash power relative to the ambient light ('fill-in flash')?

Reducing flash power darkens the image and creates this half lighted area on the models face.