CREATIVE PROJECTS
2
Get set up
For this shoot a standard zoom lens will give you
plenty of versatility. You don’t need a ‘fast’ portrait
lens with a wide maximum aperture, because we’ll be using
flash to light the model rather than relying on natural light.
As we’ll be shooting with an external flashgun, you’ll need a
light stand or tripod to place it on, using the mount supplied
with the flashgun.1
Choose a location
A large and spacious room is ideal for this shoot. It
doesn’t need to have good natural light – the darker the
better, in fact – and you don’t need to worry about cluttered
backdrops, because only your subject should be visible when
you exclude the ambient light.4
Narrow the aperture
If the scene is still fairly light, dial in a narrower
aperture and take another test shot, and repeat
until you’ve eliminated all the ambient light and the whole
scene appears dark. You can use the histogram to help you;
ideally there should be just a few lines of pixels clipped at
the left-hand edge of the graph to indicate a heavily under-
exposed scene.3
Camera settings
We want to eliminate as much of the ambient light as
possible, so forget about exposing for your subject
for the time being. Set a low ISO of 100 to retain maximum
quality for smooth, noise-free shadows, and set your shutter
speed to the maximum flash sync speed, which is 1/200 sec
(1/250 sec on higher-end cameras). Start with a wide aperture
value, such as f/5.6, and take a test shot.6
Test the flash
Set the flashgun to Slave mode (refer to your manual
for how to do this), and make sure your camera and
flashgun are set to the same channel so they can
communicate; the default channel on your camera is 1. Set
your flashgun to manual, and place it in front of your model
to one side. Set the power to one-quarter to start with, take a
test shot, and increase the flash power if your model appears
under-exposed.5
Flash settings
Now we need to set the camera’s pop-up flash to
trigger the external flashgun. Select the first shooting
menu, scroll down to ‘Flash control’ and press ‘Set’. Next scroll
down to ‘Built-in flash func’, press ‘Set’ and then scroll down
to ‘Wireless func’ and press ‘Set’. You want to select the third
option here, to fire just the external flashgun.