Faster and faster

Those darned kids, right? we have to add shutter speed. That didn't work for us the last time we tried it. Maybe with the flash on, it's going to be different. What the heck, let's give it a shot.

1/250th at f/5.6, ISO 100

That looks the same to me. The last time we tried to raise shutter speed, it got all dark. How come when we sped things up this time, nothing changed?

The answer is flash. Our flash is going off in thousands of a second. It's firing faster than any child moves. And flash responds to aperture settings, not shutter speed. why? because at 1/250th, the flash is still faster than the shutter. In essence, the shutter is completely open, then the flash goes off in between, and the shutter closes. This is your camera's "synch speed". It's the fastest shutter speed a camera can use and still get a full power pop out of the flash.

Check with your camera's manual to find what your max shutter speed is. It can vary among makes and models. One of the reasons I shoot Nikon is this higher shutter speed.

The image still looks a bit dark, though, doesn't it? This is supposed to be a white bear, and it looks a bit off-grey. what can we do about that?

Bounce with fill card

So bouncing seems to work better, but what does that little white card thing do? Let's pull it out and try it.

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

What did that do for us?

It filled the shadows under the chin a bit better. They're still there, but they're more subtle, softer. It's starting to look like a picture now. Good thing it's just a stuffed bear in a chair, though. Good thing it's not moving.

Children, however, move. An 80th of a second isn't a very fast shutter speed if things are moving quickly. How about we speed that up a bit?

Tiggers like to bounce, maybe flashes do, too?

So why did I spend all that money on a really expensive flash? It didn't do anything when I put it on the camera. But wait a minus...I see those guys at weddings and stuff aiming the flash straight up. Seems weird, but I'll give it a shot.

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

That looks better. Much smoother. what happened? The flash isn't even aimed at the bear. How did it light it better?

The key is light source size. The quality of light out of any flash is related to the size of the light source in relation to the subject. In this case, now that we aimed the flash at a nice, white ceiling, we just turned the whole ceiling into a great, big, massive light source.. It's smoother, it's got doe quality to it.

But there's still some shadows under the chin. Maybe that little bounce card thingy built in? Let's give that s shot.

Spending money

Let's take that exciting SB-900 and see what happens. It cost more, it must make a better light. I certainly hope so, for what it cost.

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

That didn't really help, did it? All that money, batteries, and it still looks like....meh. I men, it looks like the bear, but it's not exactly a stunning image, is it.

It's straight flash. It is what it is. That's all that it is.

Popping up

Open that built-in flash! We need light! We spent a fortune on this D800, it must do amazing things. People are always telling the pros "That's so beautiful, you must have a really expensive camera!" We HAVE a really expensive camera, so our picture are going to be amazing too, right? Right?

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

WTF? This was supposed to be a stuffed teddy bear in all it's glory. we used all this expensive stuff, this should look like a catalogue shot, shouldn't it?

Well, it don't.

Plan A failed. Miserably. But we have a plan B! We got an SB-900 to go with this. That's more expensive, it must make better images. Let's try that!

Going manual

We're running out of options. We need shutter speed, we need low ISO for quality, and we need aperture for depth-of-field. Let's go manual and see what this credit-sucking miracle of modern technology does to our image. It's time to go manual!

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

We got our settings locked in with full manual mode on the box, but I don't even think Grandma is going to look at this and tell us what great images we make.

What happened? There's just not enough light coming from those tiny tungsten lights up above to light the subject. "They jus' dunnae have the power, Cap'n!"

If we don't have enough light, what do we do? We ADD some light! We spent all that money, the thing's gotta have a flash, right? Let's open 'er up, and see what a $3,000 built-in does to this. It must be amazing-balls for that price, right? right?

But I want quality. Who wants to make bad images?

All of photography is a trade-off. IN fact, if you want to learn how to negotiate, this might be a good way to start off. Want depth of field? You're going to have to trade off shutter speed or ISO. What if you have to keep the quality high, so the ISO low, AND need depth of field? Well, you're going to have to sacrifice shutter speed. So let's take the camera off auto ISO, leave it on Aperture Priority, and see what this fancy big piece of crazy expensive electronics gives us.

1.3 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

So, good thing I have a tripod, isn't it? One and a third second exposure. Ya, try hand-holding that ad getting a sharp shot. I'll wait here while you do. I'll have some time. It's also a good thing that the bear doesn't move very far or fast, isn't it? If it was moving (you know, like small children do), you'd never, EVER get a clear shot.

I guess we'll have to try something else, won't we? Gonna have to speed up that shutter. Let's do that.

Step Two: What else can the camera do?

So full auto has been tried. That sucked, didn't it? There has to be a way to make this look better. What's that going to be?

Well, let's see what we can make happen by moving into aperture priority, shall we?

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 6400

Didn't really get much better. Still auto white balance, stopped down to 5.6 to get some depth of field, but as you wold expect, that jacked the ISO up to try to compensate for the loss of light. And 1/80th on an 85mm lens is starting to get risky if we want to keep sharpness. It's still not too bad, but we can see the abyss of shake on the other side of the next shutter speed down.

Do we have another option to try to keep the shutter speed high enough to hand-hold. Not really. Getting to the upper limit of the Iso scale on this camera. In fact, I think I have auto ISO capped at 6400, so this is as good as it's going to get us.