Day 61 – Cooperative Kitteh

Busy day!  No chance to shoot anything worthy of posting here. Luckily I have critters!

We had a guest speaker tonight in our lighting class. He gave a rapid fire presentation on Speedlite flash photography and my brain is reeling. It will take me some time to absorb what he told us, but I did latch on to a couple of concepts and had to try to apply them when I got home.

I learned the difference between TTL mode and manual mode and how to lessen the intensity of the flash so I experimented with stopping down the flash so that it wasn’t as intense.

This is Maya.  She was resting on the back of the sofa about an arm’s length from me. Shot at 100 ISO, f 9.0, 1/160s. Manual flash at 1/4 which I learned tonight (a) how to do and (b) is not one-fourth of intensity but rather 2 stops down.   Thank goodness she puts up with me!

© Carissa Snedeker

 

 

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7 comments

    • Thank you. We like to call Maya our “psycho kitty” but in her advancing age, she is much calmer now. And she was really only truly psycho the one time we let her have a litter of kittens!

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  2. Yeah, I don’t use the flash much because you have to experiment with it. I know people who, after a while, get a feel for the flash setting, but that comes with practice. I suppose I should put that in my arsenal as well, but . . .

    Anyway, the 1/4 seems to be about right; enough light to show lots of detain, and not enough to cast harsh shadows.

    Did you use a diffuser? I always have the Puffer diffuser in my bag (for the pop-up flash). The link for it is http://bit.ly/yrWG6u (and no, I don’g get any kickback or anything).

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    • Since the point of my class is to learn how to create one’s own and use it creatively, I will have to practice, practice, practice. I haven’t gotten a diffuser for my flash yet, but I intend to do so. I do hope to get a “feel” for the flash because I think it definitely has it’s place. I love natural light, but it doesn’t always cooperate, and for indoor photography, I really need to get a handle on this as best I can.

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      • PS – I hate my pop up flash.

        PPS – I angled the flash upward (not completely 180°) and that helped with shadows. The 1/4 setting just made the light less bright.

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