First wedding done - couple of observations on flash

Hi,

I recently completed my first wedding assignment as second photographer, and apart from getting firsthand experience of just how focused you need to be not to miss any important moments I came away with both experiences and questions on the use of off-camera flash.

I covered the entire day from pre-ceremony, ceremony, formal dinner to party, while the first photographer covered the ceremony and post-ceremony photo-shoot - lightening my responsibility in this respect, which was great.

First a question: At one point the pro used off camera flash to provide fill-light while shooting an upper-body shot into the sun. He held the flash directly in front of and about 2 feet below his camera/lens, providing fill-light from well below the face. Perhaps this will really remove shadows under facial features, but I'd think you run the risk of introducing some pretty unseemly shadows above said facial features. I'm curious to hear if anyone here on the forum uses this technique and why?

Second: The party was held in a glass structure, a bit like a greenhouse with various open wall-section, on a pier. The location was really nice, but the surface of the glass gave me some problems getting the right exposure using ETTL. Whenever parts of the flash was reflected directly back to the lens the camera would under expose the image like crazy (understandably), which made ETTL not a good choice in that setting. I soon went to manual flash exposure, adjusting the power-setting by trial and error, which worked great. +1 for manual.

Third: While still flailing around trying tog get ETTL to work the flash kept "losing the E". i.e. reverting to TTL, which also did not provide good results (presumably as I didn't adjust my shooting for it). I just couldn't figure out why this was happening - I'd power the camera and flash down, and then up, and it'd be ETTL for a while and then suddenly go back to TTL - anyone know what might cause this?

Cheers,

James

Congrats on the first wedding.

First - if the sun was truly behind the subject and fairly high I suspect he would risk introducing more shadows than he was eliminating. I can also understand that it could create a very interesting shot if held at the proper angle. See if you can get a look at any of those shots to see the results.

Second - the downfall of ETTL unfortunately. You could have also planned shots that did not reflect directly back to the camera. Your solution was good and sounds like it worked OK for you.

Third - your hot shoe on the camera sounds like it might be loose allowing the flash to lose contact with the pins for ETTL. A suggested solution here - http://www.conraderb.c​om/flashrepair/

Fill from slightly underneath the face is a widely-used technique that's been around for a long time. It won't leave a small strip of shadow under the chin like filling from above the camera will and it does a better job of filling in wrinkles.

Having said that, It's tricky to use in a wedding situation. It's generally unlikely to produce any visible shadows of its own when used as a mild fill but I still wouldn't want to do it with a bare flashgun.

Thanks for your replies, Dave and Hermes. I guess it takes delicate control of the amount of strobe to pull off a shot like that, then. But with the sun directly behind the subject and the strobe directly in front, aren't you also risking getting a very flatly lit face? I'm intrigued.

James