Photography News Issue 38

Technique 34

Photography News | Issue 38 | absolutephoto.com

Lighting Academy Flash focus

Start your journey into the exciting world of creative lighting effects with PN ’s Lighting Academy. This is the place to find out all about how flash and continuous lighting works and how it can be used to improve your shots. This month, how to control depth-of-field when using flash...

Words & pictures by Kingsley Singleton

When most of us start out with studio flash equipment it’s with an affordable kit. In all likelihood thiswill cost a fewhundredpounds, but it you pick the right package you’ll have all you need for a variety of portrait styles. If you have two heads, stands, and a mix of modifiers to create different lighting effects you can achieve a lot. Andwhile beginner-level kits are usually lower powered than more expensive enthusiast and pro models, that can be a benefit; while with the right techniques, you won’t miss out on the look of more powerful heads, either. Thekitwe’veused thismonth isElinchrom’s D-Lite RX One set, a light, portable and

versatile package that comes with two RX One heads (6-100W/s power), two stands, and bags for both, an El-Skyport trigger and two softbox modifiers (a Portalite 56cmOcta and a 66cm Square version). A Translucent deflector is also included, more about which you can find in the panel, opposite. With two modifiers you have a lot of options for changing the lighting style, and having two heads also means you can choose to use both of them on the subject, or light the subject and the background separately. Setting up the lights If the whole concept of working with flash worries you, you’ll find setting up a kit like the RX One proves how simple it can be. Light placement and height is easily adjusted thanks to the stable, clip-lock stands, and you can go as high as 2.35m if required. The included El- Skyport Plus radio trigger is a boon, too; you simply set it to the same channel and group as the two lights and can then fire the flashes and control their power remotely. The receivers are built into the heads, so there’s no messing about with separate ‘dongles’. First shot, shallow depth-of-field For the first of our shots we wanted to shoot Emma with a shallow depth-of-field, lighting her softly and also illuminating the background. But when lighting with flash, a shallow depth-of-field can present an interesting set of challenges. The minimum power of thekit is very important here, because if it’s too bright at its lowest setting, the widest apertures can’t be used without overexposing. In ambient light you can raise the shutter speed to compensate for this, but regular flash doesn’t work like that, as the shutter speed is irrelevant, and the flash power will be just as bright whether you’re shooting at 2secs or 1/200sec (it’s only the ambient light, like that from lamps in the room, or the window, that is affected by the shutter speed). ISO setting does have a bearing, so when working at wide apertures this needs to be set low. After that, the only thing you can do to reduce the intensity of the flash is to move it away from the subject; flash power diminishes in relation to distance (the inverse square law), but this will compromise the look of the lights and is impossible when working in small

Above Working with a shallow depth- of-field, a wide aperture is used, so flash power needs to be low. On the Elinchrom D-Lite RX One we used here, the 0.1 setting gives a 6W/s output, which allowed an aperture of f/2.5 at ISO 100.

Above To create lots of depth-of-field a small aperture is required. Power needs to be increased and here it was evenly applied across the frame.

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