Obsessed with Available Light

Obsessed with Available Light

  • Never! If I can see so can my camera.

    Votes: 241 43.6%

  • Rerely. Only in extreme situations, barely ever fill.

    Votes: 198 35.8%

  • As needed. I fill a few of my indoor shots.

    Votes: 97 17.5%

  • Often. I fill most of my indoor shots.

    Votes: 14 2.5%

  • All the time! Who wants to see wrinkles?

    Votes: 3 0.5%
  • Total voters
    553
Most of my photography is of shipping and architechture so a flash would not be of any use to me for the most part.

Occasionally if i'm doing an outdoor portrait I will use the inbuilt flash on my dSLR. I never think to carry my flash anyway, as I like to travel light. Almost all of my shoots require me to go to remote places so weight is an issue.

I recently did a portrait in a quiet pub and rather than use flash I just substitued my lens for a 50/1.4 and use the ambient light. Flash would have spoiled the mood.
 
Never on a RF

Never on a RF

I guess my contribution here is rather unnecessary; I´ve yet to use flash on a rangefinder camera 😎 - and use one all the time (well ...) with my dslr, bouncing off wall, roof or whatever, using the fill function. 😛
 
Mmmmmmmmmmm.... I used to be a flash-hater butchya know something? Sometimes the light just ain't right. Sometimes if you try it flashless your DOF is so shallow only 3mm of the subject's left eyelid is in focus, as you're trying to shoot hand-held at 1/2 second, metered at a grainy ISO of 64,000.


But hey - those unintelligible "avant guarde" shots of Aunt Mildred who you can't decipher through the radioactive, giant, flying, fire-breathing, 500 meter space turtle (and friend to all children) "Gamera" - sized grain; motion blurred like you trippin', 2mm DOF shots do sometimes win awards and get wall space at MOMA (...depending upon if you have a recognizable name in the pretentious arts community. If you're Joe Schmoe, it's just a grainy, blurry, out of focus pic, even if it was shot if with a $25,000, 1939, "legendary", only 2.5 were made by drunken monks, Leeka Summikrantz...)

Sometimes ya just need a flash....

And if you really wanna see a neat trick, pick up an el cheap-o 60/70 opposite of cachet, very Brady, groovy, Japanese fixed-lens RF camera with a leaf shutter that syncs flash at all speeds and use it out in broad daylight...
 
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I haven't read all the posts in the thread, but it is amazing how many don't want to use flash. I too wonder if it is due to a lack of understanding and practice. I love available light. It has an ambiance that is hard to acheive with flash. But, there are times when flash will enhance the photo too. I don't just grab a flash because it's there, but I sure am not against its use when it will get the photo I want. I don't use it as much as I used to, but I still use it any time I feel the need due to slow film, or harsh light without fill, or whatever. I have probably 8 or 10 flash units just because of that. Some like the 285 are fairly bright, others are not so bright and will fill a wall to take away shadows. My FX 103 kit has a bunch of 3x5 cards to use for bounce or fill as needed with its dedicated flash. Not all that powerful like the 285, but not bad, and TTL flash metering is convenient many times.

I guess one of the reasons I don't use it as much as I used to is that I used to do a lot of forensic photography. Flash is needed there much of the time for detail, not mood. And that TTL ... The first time I used it was with the 139Q at an arson. I had the scene guarded all night until I could get the film developed as I just couldn't beleive the small flash was really getting the shot exposed as the indicator light in the viewfinder said. But it did. Mind you, there was a lot of fire blackened evidence to shoot.

So, flash when needed, no flash if not.
 
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This poll is tough. I rarely ever use flash and only for fill outside on bright days. There needs to be another choice.
 
Finder said:
This poll is tough. I rarely ever use flash and only for fill outside on bright days. There needs to be another choice.
Click to expand...

Helle Finder,
Could you explain me this technique? I know some photographers use a flash on bright days, at the beach for instance. Why? and how?
Thanks,
Marc
 
Marc-A. said:
Helle Finder,
Could you explain me this technique? I know some photographers use a flash on bright days, at the beach for instance. Why? and how?
Thanks,
Marc
Click to expand...

Why? To bring the shadows up so detail can be seen. How? I just use a small flash. On manual, it usually recommends an aperture of f/8 or f11 and since I am shooting at f/16, this is just right. I also find automatic can work as well.

Her is a backlit color example. I doubt I could keep the backround and person well exposed without fill. I also use it for side lighting. I am not sure the B&W shows it clearly, but there is just a splash of fill to give detail. (Sorry, but these are my only examples on this computer.)
 

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Marc-A. said:
Helle Finder,
Could you explain me this technique? I know some photographers use a flash on bright days, at the beach for instance. Why? and how?
Thanks,
Marc
Click to expand...

This is why I like fixed lens/leaf shutter rangefinders so much. With cloth focal plane cameras, the flash synchs to a certain speed... 1/30 or 1/60. Most leaf shutter cameras will synch at any speed. To use fill flash, meter the scene and stop down 1-1/2 stops from what the meter says.
 
I need three answers:

My P&S camera usually (but not always!) makes good decisions about when to pop the flash and how much to use when it does. I manually cancel flash sometimes, but I mostly leave it on automatic.

I don't have a flash for my CL, and that's the way I like it: quiet in every way. My best snapshots are coming out of this body right now, especially with my C/V Heliar Classic.

My SLR could go either way, especially since I just got a couple of monolights for portrait work. A ring flash would be cool for macro work, too.

Not all flash is bad, and not all natural light is good.
 
RF lenses and remote flash

RF lenses and remote flash

I read a reference on RFF somewhere about a RF-specific technique of aiming a remote flash directly at the lens of the camera (outside the field of view of course). It was suggested that this technique brought out the best in M lenses. Has anyone tried this or heard more about it? I'd be interested to see some test shots.
 
The quality of the photos that I have taken of my daughters has jumped up significantly after I started to think more about the quality of light than just using flash all the time indoors. I find that photos taken in the open shade and indoors at a window give me very pleasant light for portraits.
 
Never on a rangefinder, but I use it on my film SLR for fill flash or special effects. It's like 90/10 % for no flash/flash.
 
NickTrop said:
This is why I like fixed lens/leaf shutter rangefinders so much. With cloth focal plane cameras, the flash synchs to a certain speed... 1/30 or 1/60. Most leaf shutter cameras will synch at any speed. To use fill flash, meter the scene and stop down 1-1/2 stops from what the meter says.
Click to expand...

My $13 RF syncs faster than my fancypants dSLR 😱

This one was shot at 1/500th for example, with a bit of fill flash camera right:
1651328307_88dd1aa2aa_o.jpg

(apologies for the crappy scan)
 
About 25 years ago I bought a Metz 45-CT1: state-of-the-art (non-dedicated) flash for the time. About 10 years ago a friend was setting up a weddng business so I 'lent' it to her, and have never felt any real need to ask for it back.

It's a big, heavy, awkward, inconvenient thing to clag on the side of a small, light, elegant, sweet-handling camera, so I just don't miss it. I can think of half a dozen pics that would have been better in the last 15 years with a bit of fill flash, but their diminished quality is a small price to pay for not carrying/ using/ piddling about with on-camera flash. Overdone fill flash is worse than no fill flash at all, with a cardbosard cut-out effect.

In the studio it's another matter -- I have several thousand Watt-seconds of studio flash, though I prefer tungsten -- and I have no problem with 'improving' a set up shot with addtional lighting; but for the kind of rangefinder photography I do and enjoy, flash is a complete and utter waste of time.

Besides, if God had meant us to use on-camera flash, She would never have gicen us Summiluxes, Noctiluxes and Delta 3200.

Cheers,

Roger
 
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