4

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / People and Places Indoors

    ■   The wall or ceiling is too far away and there

isn’t enough light reaching the subject. This

happens a lot, especially if you are moving

around while photographing. While the small

flash is pretty powerful, light still loses its illu-

minating power really quickly as it travels, so

trying to bounce a light off a wall that is too

far away will result in an underexposed image.

    ■   The flash unit isn’t adjustable. Some flash

units do not have adjustable flash heads and

cannot be adjusted at all. These cannot be

used to bounce the light.

Because bouncing the flash will not work in all

situations, some clever designers came up with

flash modifiers that will help to give you a better

light from the flash unit attached to your camera.

These light modifiers can be used both with on-

camera and off-camera flashes and the basic idea

is the same: to take the small, hard light from a

flash and turn it into a bigger, softer light.

The first solution is the simplest, and that is to

put a diffuser dome on the flash. This is just a

piece of plastic that fits over the head of the flash,

and instead of the light coming straight out of the

flash head, it bounces around inside the dome,

diffusing the light. This diffuser comes standard

with many Nikon flash units, but if your flash

doesn’t include one, then you can get one from

Sto-Fen called the Omni-Bounce. To use the dif-

fuser, just place it over the flash head, then angle

the flash head at 45 degrees over the subject and

take your photos. Because the light no longer

comes out in a tight beam but instead as a larger,

diffused light, it reduces harsh shadows and your

subject is illuminated more evenly.

A second solution is to use a bounce card, such as

the LumiQuest Promax System. This is a device

that attaches to the head of your flash and mimics

flash head at the ceiling and at the wall

behind you. Instead of being aimed straight up

or over the head of the subject, just rotate the

flash head 180 degrees so that it is aimed over

your head. This works when you have your

back close to a wall and a lower white ceiling,

and it also helps to reduce the shadows under

the eyes that can be caused by the previous

method. With the light bouncing off the

ceiling and the wall, the subject is more

evenly lit.

■   Bounce the light off a wall. Bouncing the

light off a nearby wall turns that wall into a
light source and can really make for some
great portrait light. This is because the light
comes from the side and gives the subject
some shadow and character, more than the
ceiling bounce. This works when the wall is
nearby and white. All you need to do is rotate
the flash head to the side 45 or 90 degrees
instead of up.

There will be some situations where bouncing the
light will not be possible:

■   There are no nearby walls or ceilings to

bounce the light off of. Bouncing the light
only works if there is something to bounce it
off of, so if the ceilings are really high or you
are photographing in the middle of the room
and there are no walls nearby, then this just
won’t work.

■   The walls or ceilings are a different color,

which will introduce a colorcast. Light picks
up the color of any surface it is bounced off of,
which can cause the light to have an
unwanted color. For example, if the ceiling or
walls are red, then the light that bounces off
the red surface will cause the subject to have
an unwanted red cast.