Strobist: Day 1

One key to becoming a better photographer is understanding light. And when most of my free time is spent after the sun's gone down, it's even more important to understand how to use a flash. So far, I've been experimenting with bouncing a flash, but based on posts by Laurence Kim and having lurked the Strobist.com group on Flickr, I've become inspired to try using a flash off-camera. This has been popular for a while and a blogger several years ago coined the phrase "Strobist," which stuck. Strobist.com is still extremely popular and it contains several tutorials that are very helpful for starting out.

Honestly, there's so much information out there, it's actually a little overwhelming on knowing where to start. An initial setup can actually be pretty easy and inexpensive when you get down to it. If you already have an amateur level of gear, including a tripod and a flash, then really there are only 3 things you need:

1) An umbrella. This is to diffuse the light and is what's called a "modifier." A soft box is another modifier that controls the light better, but is more expensive and isn't as quick to setup or tear down. I went with a white, shoot through, which is closer to a soft box. The bigger the umbrella, the softer light. They're measured based on the arc, not the diameter, and I went with a 43" white satin umbrella from Westcott. Umbrellas can be had for around $20.

2) A swivel holder (with a shoe for the flash). This is the part that connects to the tripod (or light stand), holds the umbrella, and the flash attaches to it, pointed at the center of the umbrella. There are a lot of options out there, but the biggest thing is to make sure it has a shoe for the flash (preferably with a screw to lock it in place) and that it has the adapters to ensure it fits on your tripod/stand. Here's one from Adorama, although again, there are a lot of different options out there all around the $15-$20 price range.

3) A way to trigger the flash off-camera. Many cameras can optically trigger a flash by using its onboard flash to send a quick pulse. Any "slave" flash that can be optically triggered (sometimes called wireless triggering) will respond to this little pulse and in turn it'll fire. If the camera/flash combination cannot be optically triggered, then it requires a wire or radio trigger, which come in a breadth of options as well.

Well, today my new gear arrived and tonight I was able to give it a try with a simple setup. Using the 43" white shoot-through umbrella set up in our bedroom, I took some shots of Jenny (and a couple with Roxy, too). The umbrella was set up camera high left pointing at Jenny at about a 45-degree angle. Some shots had the light angled more from the side, but always from her right (camera left).

One challenge I had was with focusing. Even with all the lights turned on, the auto-focus struggled and would hunt. When I switched to manual focus, I had a hard time finding the right focal point given the E-620's dim viewfinder. So it goes. I started with my 40-150mm, but switched to my 14-54mm after focusing issues. I also shot a couple with my EP-1/20mm Panny.

Here's one from the "shoot." It's actually harder than I had made it out to be in my mind, so I'll need a lot more practice. I also struggle with having a place to shoot without distracting backgrounds. Oh well, practice is the fun part, right?

Something else I found interesting is that between the 3 lenses I used, there were some noticeable differences. The 40-150mm was sharp, but it didn't have the nice tones that the 14-54 did. The 20mm on the E-P1 was really sharp, and had really strong contrast. Here's a set with some other pictures from tonight where I'll keep adding more as I practice.