I've been coaching the school's mountain bike team this spring, and been using the opportunity to take some neat shots of the kids and promote the team through photography.
The first set up was pretty simple-I picked a good spot where the trail swept into the frame, then set up flash high and to my right. This balanced out the light from the sun, which was coming from behind the riders. I made the background a bit darker than usual with my shutter speed and aperture. The flash brought the riders' exposure up to an appropriate level. The flash was triggered by wireless e-ttl: my on-camera flash told the remote when to fire. This system has ups and downs. On the upside, the settings of the remote flash can be controlled from the on-camera unit. The flash will also figure out exposure for you, if you want it to. On the downside, getting the flashes to talk in daylight can be tricky, since they use light pulses for communication. You have to find a way for the light from the master to get to the slave. A diffuser helps, by spreading the master's light in all directions.
On another day, we went out and made everyone look fast. I used a long exposure (1/10s) and panned with the riders to blur the background. A 2nd curtain flash burst (which fires just before the shutter closes) froze the riders in place. Again, since the riders need to be the focal point, I dropped the exposure by stopping down to f7ish and using a polarizing filter. The flash was set to +1 2/3, which made the riders 1 2/3 stops brighter than the background.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment