Photography

First Flash

Posted by Wes Allen on

I will be taking a trip to Portland, Oregon at the end of June in order to follow my former boss around with a camera 1. As we’ll be indoors at a conference center for the majority of our time, I thought it might be worth investing in an inexpensive flash for the project. After searching Amazon, I finally settled on the Neewer VK750 II i-TTL Speedlite. This is a flash which will speak with my camera, and the two will work together to create the best photo based on my settings.

I’ve never had a bounce flash before, so I’m looking forward to exploring this type of photography. As with any new toy, I pull this out of the box soon after it arrived and put it through a quick test 2. I took five photos, with the flash set up a different way for each. The descriptions are attached to each photo in the gallery below.

The flash pointed at my son, no diffuser. The colors are washed out, and the shadows are very deep. Red eye is also prominent.
The flash pointed at the ceiling with the bounce card extended, no diffuser. Colors are better, tough some deep shadows remain. On the other hand, there is no red eye.
The flash pointed at the ceiling with the bounce card extended. The diffuser is covering the lamp, which cuts down futher on the shadows. Red eye is gone and the shadows are the most evened out.
The flash is pointed directly at my son, but the diffuser is down. The shadows are less harsh than the first shot, but there is some glare off his headset, and the red eye has returned.
I bounced the flash off the wall and ceiling without a diffuser. The result is pleasing, but the highlights are still washed out a tad. There is, however, no red eye .
  1. It’s a long story. In reality he’s letting me do this as a favor to me. ↩
  2. After finding suitable batteries. We have around two hundred rechargeable double-a batteries in the house, my just piles them in a bag and then complains to me when he can’t find any charged ones. ↩

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5 Comments

  1. chrisjwilson's avatar chrisjwilson says:
    June 8, 2017 at 5:34 am

    Nice! See if you can get a polystyrene bowl and put that on top. It acts as a “Gary Fong” diffuser and gives some pretty pleasant shadows.

    1. Wes Allen's avatar wezlo says:
      June 9, 2017 at 8:34 am

      You need to show me this setup!

    2. chrisjwilson's avatar chrisjwilson says:
      June 11, 2017 at 10:37 am

      I’ll see if I can grab one from somewhere. Otherwise a quick Google search for “Homemade Gary Fong diffuser” will bring some pretty interesting inventions.

    3. Wes Allen's avatar wezlo says:
      June 11, 2017 at 11:27 am

      Thanks!

  2. Peg Horton's avatar Peg Horton says:
    June 16, 2017 at 7:14 pm

    You have a good looking son. That is a wonderful shot.

    Sent from my iPad

    >

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