Discount digital cameras

Yellow daisy, oh yellow daisy - please tell me about fills and
flags! How does one use them effectively?

Good question sighs my daisy. An answer or two…

One can shoot anything straight without flash in good daylight
and get okay results. I’ve read a load of articles in the last
few months saying that bright sunshine is bad, bad, really bad,
for color saturation when shooting flowers or anything for that
matter - true often, but not always so.

One needs to consider all sorts of things - purpose, time of
day, result required, etc! Dawn and dusk produce warm, shadowy
light and if one wants to take a landscape photograph of note,
this would be the ideal time to do it…using a tripod of
course! Shutter speeds slow down in order to get the depth of
field required, f16 or even f22, so one is often shooting at ¼
or ½ a second. I’ve met a few people who can handhold shutter
speeds that slow but most of us…never in a million years! In
the landscape world tripods rule okay!

I know, I know, ironic considering that I spent a bit of Mild
Obsession #2 justifying my desire to shoot unfettered by a three
legged monster. I did say in my defence, though, be consistent.
Part of that consistency is recognition of the tools needed in
each particular situation. Life is a balancing act, no more so
than in the world of photography.

Another natural lighting situation to consider is sunlight
mid-morning to mid-afternoon (harsh front light, but often
awesome backlight), tricky at the best of times but even this
light can be used well and effectively if one knows how to
control it.

A really good way to learn lighting in controlled circumstances
is to use angle poise lamps and a small subject on a plain
background. For my subject I chose a yellow daisy…not the same
one plucked from a faraway field, no, a yellow painted tin
daisy, beautiful nonetheless, which I stood up on a piece of
white A3 card!

What about color balance you cry? At the risk of being boringly
repetitive…digital technology…white balance (WB)… All hail
the little tiny green men inside one’s camera, running around
changing the color gels so that we can shoot color corrected
images no matter what the light source. Incredible stuff!

Try this…

Grab a plain backdrop, a cotton sheet, piece of white card or
anything that detracts as little from the subject as possible.
Take your subject, place it on your backdrop not too close to
the background, set up an angle poise lamp to the left side of
the subject and point the light directly at the subject
(preferably slightly above). You should be producing huge, harsh
shadows. Interrogation time!

Now grab a piece of white card and line it up side on to your
subject on the other side from the lamp and move it around until
the shadows on the subject are softened to some degree .i.e.
fill…The more one can soften the light on subject the better,
so next step is to soften the source.

Turn the angle poise around pointing away from the subject
angled 45 degrees up, then place a piece of white card in front
of it reflecting the light back toward the subject - hey presto
softer light -much softer. Soften things even more by playing
with more fills on the other side of the subject too. A good
soft result, not so dramatic perhaps, but eminently flattering.

I hasten to add at this point that I have done fashion shoots in
the past using just harsh direct light, emulating movie-lighting
of the 30’s, and achieved gorgeous results. It all comes down to
control i.e. positive decision making rather than negative.

Play with this studio lighting setup in miniature until you get
a feel for it. There are so many possibilities…

Try this too…

Shine two lamps at the center of your background, one each side,
angled at 45 degrees to the plane of the background. Make sure
that your subject is flagged to stop any light falling directly
onto it. How? Place black card (flags) on each side of the
subject (slightly back of the subject) showing the background
clearly but not allowing light from the lamps to spill onto the
sides of the subject. Now place two pieces of white card in
front of the subject facing the background. Leave a small gap to
shoot through.

Result?

A subject only lit by backlight and reflected light from the
card in front. It’s a really good way to produce a backlit
daylight feel. I use it all the time with studio shots of
people. It can be fantastically flattering, if done well.

Play! Play lots. Light control is very satisfying when you get
the hang of it.

To learn how to translate this lighting control to daylight
conditions and to find out more about flags, scrims and other
goodies keep a lookout for Flower Pictures - A Mild Obsession #4.

Remember always - good lighting is good lighting period. Sounds
obvious, I know, but real easy to forget.

See the beauty!

Copyright 2005 Patrick Heathcock

About the author:
Sometime commercial photographer London, fulltime flower art
photographer and web designer living in the southern semisphere,
soaking up the sun. Visit A Flower Gallery to
view the yellow daisy and more!

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