Party Shots

Amen to the photo contest warning. And Pete, your technique is perfect, except for one detail; the Stofen. In situations like these, all that thing is doing is throwing light all over the place, and since there's nothing close enough for enough light to bounce to have any effect over the direct light, you're producing exactly the same effect as direct flash, while burning more battery power.

Pete wrote in post #4211964
Course you can!! The flash will give you noiseless subjects. You might still get noise in the background, but it really won't matter that much. Give it a go!

I SOOOOOOO needed this last night New Years Eve. I posted my struggles in "Quest for Candids". I am running a P&S S5 IS.
Pete are you familiar with this camera?

Harry
PS-Thank-you for such an informative post as I have always hated how my indoor/flash shots have looked so shallow and flat. If I can just get my hands around how to get this look out of my P&S.

bieber wrote in post #4608402
Amen to the photo contest warning. And Pete, your technique is perfect, except for one detail; the Stofen. In situations like these, all that thing is doing is throwing light all over the place, and since there's nothing close enough for enough light to bounce to have any effect over the direct light, you're producing exactly the same effect as direct flash, while burning more battery power.

You're mis-understanding entirely what's going on here. The flash is being used as fill-in, the majority of the exposure is the ambient light. The flash isn't going at anything like full power (with or without the stoffen).

Get the word "bounce" out of your head. It doesn't figure here at all.

Blast wrote in post #4608761
I SOOOOOOO needed this last night New Years Eve. I posted my struggles in "Quest for Candids". I am running a P&S S5 IS.
Pete are you familiar with this camera?

Harry
PS-Thank-you for such an informative post as I have always hated how my indoor/flash shots have looked so shallow and flat. If I can just get my hands around how to get this look out of my P&S.

Sorry, I don't know about the S5. But if it can go into manual mode, bump up the ISO, and support and ETTL, then it'll probably work.

Pete wrote in post #4613386
You're mis-understanding entirely what's going on here. The flash is being used as fill-in, the majority of the exposure is the ambient light. The flash isn't going at anything like full power (with or without the stoffen).

Get the word "bounce" out of your head. It doesn't figure here at all.

That's my point. The Sto-Fen's sole purpose is to bounce light off of surrounding walls and ceilings. If it's not doing that, then all it's doing is getting in the way of your flash, forcing it to put out more light and depleting your batteries faster. The surface itself is exactly the same size as your flash head, so it's not going to do anything to soften shadows, reduce glare, or any such thing...

bieber wrote in post #4614677
That's my point. The Sto-Fen's sole purpose is to bounce light off of surrounding walls and ceilings. If it's not doing that, then all it's doing is getting in the way of your flash, forcing it to put out more light and depleting your batteries faster. The surface itself is exactly the same size as your flash head, so it's not going to do anything to soften shadows, reduce glare, or any such thing...

It's being used here to diffuse the glare from foreheads and glasses.

I've been reading hear for weeks. Great thread you have going and thanks for all the tips.

Pete wrote in post #4615209
It's being used here to diffuse the glare from foreheads and glasses.

But it doesn't. There's no difference between light coming from your flash head and light coming from the sto-fen, as far as peoples' foreheads and glasses are concerned. The only thing that matters in that regard is the size of your light source and its position, and the stofen adds an insignificant amount of size and doesn't change the light source's position at all.

bieber wrote in post #4615807
But it doesn't. There's no difference between light coming from your flash head and light coming from the sto-fen, as far as peoples' foreheads and glasses are concerned. The only thing that matters in that regard is the size of your light source and its position, and the stofen adds an insignificant amount of size and doesn't change the light source's position at all.

I got the result I wanted, it doesn't really matter how I got there.

bieber wrote in post #4615807
But it doesn't. There's no difference between light coming from your flash head and light coming from the sto-fen, as far as peoples' foreheads and glasses are concerned. The only thing that matters in that regard is the size of your light source and its position, and the stofen adds an insignificant amount of size and doesn't change the light source's position at all.

Actually I beg to differ since I tried the equivalent of a stofen and it did actually help diffuse the light better. Few of my friends from NYE had greasy faces which really showed up to shine without the diffuser.

So I left it on and got these results.

https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=4610109&pos​tcount=158

elysium wrote in post #4615870
Actually I beg to differ since I tried the equivalent of a stofen and it did actually help diffuse the light better. Few of my friends from NYE had greasy faces which really showed up to shine without the diffuser.

So I left it on and got these results.

https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=4610109&pos​tcount=158

Your results may have been improved some by the fact that there was a low ceiling allowing some bounce light. Was the flash pointed straight at them, or upwards? If you're still using head-on flash, any improvement you see is going to be coincidental: this is a matter of physics, not really something that you can argue based on personal preference...

bieber wrote in post #4616566
Your results may have been improved some by the fact that there was a low ceiling allowing some bounce light. Was the flash pointed straight at them, or upwards? If you're still using head-on flash, any improvement you see is going to be coincidental: this is a matter of physics, not really something that you can argue based on personal preference...

Pics were taken with the flash angled @ 45degrees. The diffuser does help in situations like this. Coincidental? Perhaps but then I wouldn't have expected the majority of pictures to come out correctly.

Yea its super cool!!

elysium wrote in post #4616594
Pics were taken with the flash angled @ 45degrees. The diffuser does help in situations like this. Coincidental? Perhaps but then I wouldn't have expected the majority of pictures to come out correctly.

In this case, it looks like it really was doing you some good, as there appears to be a ceiling low enough to bounce off of where you were shooting. I was referring to what Pete was doing, turning the flash head straight ahead but leaving the omnibounce on

Oh right. I not sure if I tried that. Might be worth checking out but I just tend to partially bounce now while bumping up ISO.

I never knew photography was such a science.