Original subtitles

Alright guys, the ultimate test.

We're here outside, it's very, very cold, so

Lisa's doing not so great in terms of

a little bit cold.

I've got goosebumps happening in my arms.

We'll be nice and quick here.

Now, where we are, we're in a cul

-de-sac.

We're in Las Vegas and it's outdoors.

It's actually very, very tough because I've got

no ceiling to bounce off.

I've got really no ground to bounce off.

This is just ordinary tar or bitumen as

we call it in Australia.

Now, right over there is a wall that's

very, very far away.

Now, in fact, if I had to estimate

10, 20, 30, you know what, 60, 70

feet, give or take, that's 60, 70 feet

away.

First of all, I'm going to just show

you how I expose for ambience first.

So I am here focusing on Lisa and

then as you can see, it's really, really

muddy.

I've got the ambience of the house lights

in the background.

Yes, I can make them darker a little

bit, but at the moment, I am shooting

with 200th of a second F4 at 5000

ISO.

I might bring that down a little bit,

4000 ISO, 200 F4, and what I'm going

to do is, we talked about bouncing the

flash 90 degrees in the direction of where

the nose is pointing.

In this case, Lisa, I'm going to need

you to turn your face slightly that way.

Perfect.

Now, if I go TTL, guys, TTL, it's

through the lens.

The flash is determining the output of the

power with the camera.

It's not going to give me enough power.

I know this from experience.

So what I'm going to do, I'm going

to turn the flash on.

I am going to use my compensation.

So now it's at zero.

It's on TTL, but it's on zero.

What I want to happen is, I want

the light to go all the way on

that wall and then bounce all the way

back.

So I am going to, I think I

need about two stops of compensation.

In other words, I'm getting two more stops

of power than what the flash and the

camera are talking to each other about.

Okay, let's see if this works.

So 200 F4, 4000 ISO, plus two stops

of power.

I'm going to lower my camera angle so

I get a bit of ambience.

And now, just lean forward towards me, Lisa.

Turn your face that way and just eyes

that way.

There you go.

Perfect.

Not meant to be an incredible shot, guys.

We're just doing this little technique here.

Good.

Hold it.

Let's see if this worked.

And it did.

Have a look at that.

Isn't that crazy?

That looks beautiful.

The light on there is about as good

as it'll get with one on camera flash,

but look at the environment that we're in.

Like, this is basically all the way, again,

60, 70 feet.

This is no joke.

I love the fact that we can do

this.

And if you were shooting, let's say, outdoors

in a tent or something like that, you

could bounce off a tent.

You can do many things.

Now, let's talk about another scenario.

What happens if we didn't have anything to

bounce off?

We bounce 70 feet away, 70 feet back.

It's 140 feet, so don't use, Jerry, I've

got a very large reception.

I don't know how to bounce, and don't

use that as an excuse.

Now, we have nothing to bounce off now.

The actual homes are so far away, it's

ridiculous.

It's very difficult.

So what we're going to do now is

I'm going to show you a really fun

technique that you can use.

In fact, all you need is just one

little thing to bounce off.

It could be that you just put a

light stand on and a reflector, and you

bounce off that reflector, or do something like

this.

Dylan, I've got this little bug on me.

I'm going to use your back here, mate,

so I apologize for that.

Okay, so just stand right there for me.

That's about right.

I've got to sort of look at, you

know, how is it going to bounce?

Is it going to ricochet and everything?

So take one step to your right, and

then just turn a bit to your left.

Stop.

So is he pointing his back towards you,

you would say?

Okay, so look at him.

So actually just, Lisa, look that way for

me.

Okay, I'm going to lower my angle now,

and let's see what we got.

Perfect.

I love it.

Check it out.

We've got some beautiful ambience in the background.

We've got the light on her face, and

you would swear that was a softbox done

with one little on-camera flash.

Now, okay, now you're saying, well, wait a

second.

We're photographers.

We all wear black.

There's no white shirts.

It's not going to happen.

Well, let's see what else we can do.

Dylan, you can put your jacket on, mate.

What I'm going to do now is I'm

actually going to go about minus one on

my flash.

So in other words, if I put it

on TTL and don't compensate, I don't add

more power or less power, then it's just

outputting what it thinks it needs.

By experience with the technique I'm about to

use, I feel like minus one is going

to be where it's at.

Here's what I'm going to do.

I am going to bring my thumb right

on the corner of this flash.

What's going to happen is the flash will

bounce off my hand and go on her

face.

Now, just before I do that, though, in

fact, I want to shoot you TTL, zero

compensation and full flash just to show you

the difference.

Okay.

So there we have a deer in the

headlights, a beautiful deer in the headlights nonetheless,

but not that great.

Yes, we can use modifiers.

Yes, you can do all these different things.

But if you had nothing and you were

under the gun and you wanted to actually

try a different technique, all you've got to

do, and again, for me, I'm thinking it's

going to be at minus one compensation.

I'm going to bring my thumb right on

the corner of that flash.

I am going to bounce it off my

hand.

Let's see.

Now, check that out, guys.

Now, you would say there's not as much

modeling on her face than before, of course,

because the flash is not bouncing all the

way there and coming all the way back.

But if you look at that shot, now,

at least there's a bit of warmth.

Why?

Because the flash is hitting my skin tone

and then back on her.

But you've got to say it at least

is better than that.

That one is very cold.

It's uninviting.

It's very straight.

This one, you can see a bit more

shadow on her cheekbone on the right there,

camera right, and a little bit of jawline

there.

And, of course, we increase the warm tone.

So, guys, I love this.

Practice this technique and you'll be amazed.

When you're at a reception venue, when you're

playing around a little bit and you're seeing

the mother of the bride turn left, turn

right, if she turns her face left, this

goes right, bang.

If you want to shoot a vertical shot

and then she turns her face that way,

bang.

You'll be doing this left, right, up and

down so many times, it will make your

flash very, very loose like mine is.

So, just remember, guys, you don't always have

to practice, say, flash and put something on

your flash head.

Just leave it bare flash.

You might just enjoy it better.

Practice this technique.

You'll find that 90% of the time,

Lisa's getting delirious, 90% of the time

this will work.

Why it will not work, we'll discuss in

the classroom right now.

Thank you so much, guys.