Original subtitles

I'm really excited to tell you about an

incredible technique using on-camera flash to make

on-camera flash not look like it.

And I think so many people have spent

thousands of dollars trying to work out what

is the holy grail of making flash not

look like it, making it look natural.

And here's the thing, we buy these modifiers

and we do all of these things.

Many of us will go to a reception

venue and put light stands up and bounce

off the ceiling and do all these things.

And couples and families have spent thousands of

dollars creating the beautiful ambience that they see

in a reception venue.

And then all of a sudden we come

along and we blast it with flash and

perhaps we might get clean light, but then

we ruin the beauty of what's around us.

And if nothing else, if it's not about

actually taking away that beauty or anything like

that, it is purely just simple to use

one on-camera flash.

So what I'm going to do right now,

I'm actually shooting with the Nikon Z7.

I have a, in fact, I have an

older flash.

I have the Nikon SB910.

And now we're going to see the difference

about how we can use flash in different

ways.

So first of all, I'm in my living

room right now.

Okay.

So we've got the bar right behind me.

We've got the sort of living area here

that goes out to the backyard and it's

tough.

I've made it very tough for myself.

Now, just so you know, the light that's

on me is purely a gridded continuous light,

just so you can see me talking to

you right now.

It's barely, it's not even touching Lisa at

all because we have an egg crate there.

We have a grid, so it's not touching

her at all.

We have a little hint of ambience, which

I'll show you in a moment.

But what I've done is we've got a

light on curtains.

So I'll just show you what we're looking

at right now.

So I've got basically a light on the

back of those curtains to emulate ambience the

way we would see at a reception.

So for example, if our couple are dancing

on the dance floor right there, they're dancing

in pretty crappy light, but then there's a

little bit of ambience.

Now I can choose to stand anywhere at

a reception venue or an event or anything

like that.

The problem is that when we start or

are inexperienced or we haven't been taught properly,

you just follow the bride and the groom

around dancing and doing what you're doing and

not really paying attention to the background.

See the ambience, I have no control over.

I do have control over where I stand

though.

So here's what I'm going to do.

If the whole reception venue is dark, like

I've darkened our house in right now, I

am going to stand in a position where

I've got at least some ambience.

And if I have no ambience, that's okay.

This technique will still work.

So I'm going to put my eye up

to the camera and I'm looking at the

background now.

So if you're at basically my camera settings,

you can see it's 640 ISO.

I'm raising it to about 1600 ISO.

I'm not going to play with fire here.

I'm going to shoot at around about 200,

200th of a second, and I'm going to

shoot it for F4.

Actually, I'll do this.

Let's pick a common exposure that we might

use at a reception.

All right, let's go 200 speed F4, 3200

ISO, as you can basically see.

Now I'm going to take a photograph and

you'll be able to see it right now

that basically the ambience is there.

You can see that she's practically pitch black.

It's quite noisy.

Of course it is, at least in the

foreground, because the exposure is not that great.

So I determined my exposure with the ambience

that's in front of me.

Now what I do is this.

Let's show you some common ways that people

use flash, perhaps if you're inexperienced or haven't

been taught correctly.

Let's do this.

I'm going to put my flash on TTL.

I'm not going to change any kind of

setting.

It's on TTL.

There's no modifier.

There's nothing on the flash.

I'm going to take a shot of Lisa.

In fact, let me just go nice and

close there.

She's going to hate me because this is

going to be a beautiful girl in bad

light.

Now as you can see, the light on

her, she gets away with it because she's

gorgeous, but for us mere mortals, it doesn't

look that great.

It's like a deer in the headlights.

It's an issue.

We need to work something out.

We need to help her out.

Now some of us might do this.

We might bounce up like that.

Let's see what that does.

Okay, so now we've filled in a bit

of light.

We've actually killed a little bit of the

ambience, but we're actually, in one way we're

better and one way we're worse.

Before it was flat, but at least the

light died by the time it actually went

to the curtains.

On TTL, when I bounced upwards, it filled

in a bit of the light, but it

was a bit of an issue.

So let's see what happens if we don't

put any kind of card out or diffuser

or anything like that.

We simply just bring it up.

Let's have a look what happens now.

Okay, that's actually not too bad compared to

the other ones.

That's usually going to be the worst one.

I think by nature of the ceiling, perhaps

we're bouncing a little bit differently, but still

we can do better.

Some of us actually do this.

We put our card out and we bring

it up on a 45 degree angle like

that.

So let's see what happens when we look

at those.

All right, it's probably the most even one

at the moment.

That's going to be quite even in a

sense that it's got a little hint of

ambience.

We've got some pretty good detail on her.

If we compare the one with the card

out, then we've got the one with no

card.

So this one was just up like that.

This one was on a 45 degree angle

and then this one was straight flash.

Now here's the cool technique that I'm going

to teach you.

What we're going to do, we're going to

use no modifier.

We're leaving it on TTL.

Nikon have spent millions of dollars, as other

camera companies have, to work out the technology

of the flash and how it talks to

the camera.

So I am going to put the flash

down and I am going to turn it

90 degrees to the left.

Now you might say, well, that's just silly.

The flash is not going to hit her

at all.

Well, yeah, it's not.

The flash is no longer the light source.

In fact, the wall behind the camera that's

filming me at this very stage is going

to be the light source.

Now I haven't tested this, I promise you.

I'm just hoping that the flash actually looks

as good as I think it's going to

be.

And there's a couple of golden rules that

we're going to share with you on how

this technique will work.

So Lisa, I want you to very gently

just turn your face this way.

Now, for the sake of the argument here,

I'm going to take one more shot of

you with no flash, just to prove to

everyone watching right now that as you can

see, we've got ambience in the background, but

it's a severely underexposed shot and we can't

really see any detail on her face.

Now though, I'm going to turn the flash

on, it's on TTL, there's no compensation, and

I simply focus on her eyes, bounce it,

and check that out.

That is incredible, if I do say so

myself.

It's not that it's an amazing photograph, but

if you look at the photograph that you're

seeing right now, look at the difference between

professional and amateur.

Professional, amateur.

The idea is this guys, so if you're

looking over the shoulder with me right now,

if Lisa's actually looking at my camera, like

looking at me right now, if I bounce

the flash 90 degrees to the left, it's

going to split light it.

In fact, let me do that right now.

Split lighting basically means that we're illuminating one

side of the face and not the other.

Now if she turns her face to her

right, what's basically happening is that her nose

is like an arrow saying to the photographer,

bounce your flash 90 degrees in the direction

of where my nose is pointing.

So the minute she turns her face that

way, now don't get me wrong, there'll be

times at the reception, most of the time

you are not, you cannot direct her.

She's going to be standing the way she's

standing and you're going to basically work around

her.

So if she's turning her face that way,

or if not, you just simply go a

few steps to the right, she's going to

be pointing her face that way, you actually

bounce your flash 90 degrees to the left,

my left, her right, and then we do

the shot.

And again, look how consistent that is, that's

simply TTL flash.

Just to remind you of the exposure that

we're on, we're at 200 f4, 3200 ISO,

but it's incredible how we can go from

that beautiful look and feel, then we've got

straight on, which I prefer the other one,

and then of course we've got nothing.

Now if we feel that the light has

bounced too much on the background and killed

a little bit of that ambience, then let

me bring my ISO down a little bit.

So now I'm maybe at around about 2000

ISO, 200 speed at f4, and let me

do the same technique.

Let's see what's happened now.

So now we get a little bit of

that ambience in the background, we've darkened that

background a little bit, and of course we've

got that beautiful exposure on her as well.

For the sake of the argument though, I

am going to bring up the ISO at

2500 ISO.

Now you've got a few questions that you're

asking right now, unless you're freaking out and

thinking oh my god why haven't I seen

or heard of this technique before?

There's a few questions you're going to ask

and I'm going to answer them for you.

What happens if you want to shoot vertically?

Well you bring up the camera like this,

and then if her nose is pointed that

way, I am going to focus on her

eyes, the eye that's closest to the camera,

which is basically her left, and then I

get a beautiful clean photograph that you would

swear was done with a softbox.

And that's the cool thing is that I've

got one on camera flash and this could

be this sort of area that we're photographing

in right now could be likened to a

reception venue.

Now I know what you're thinking, I know

what you're going to ask, and we'll get

to that right very very soon.

What happens in fact if two people are

interacting?

How are you going to do that?

Where are you going bounce the flash?

What's going to happen?

Well let's do that right now.

So Dylan, I'm going to get you nice

and close over here.

I just told you that we want to

bounce the flash 90 degrees in the direction

of where the nose is pointing.

But what happens if they're interacting?

Well if they're interacting as they're doing now,

great, they're interacting.

Let's say you're sort of a little bit

away, you're doing a speech of some description,

and now I want to compliment one of

them.

Well I'm going to sacrifice the king for

the queen.

So let's say for example you're looking at

your beautiful wife or wife-to-be, and

Lisa, you're looking out there at your dad.

Okay, perfect.

So now I'm going to bounce the flash

in the direction of Lisa who I want

to feature.

So let's do that.

So what you'll find is that he will

not get as good a light, but she

will.

Okay, hold it there.

So again, that looks like a beautiful softbox,

it looks nice and clean, we have a

little bit of ambience there, life is good.

Now if they're both looking off in that

direction, they both get the good light.

So squeezing close together, turn your faces and

bodies a bit that way, stop there, perfect.

Let's do that now, gorgeous, hold it.

And have a look at how beautiful and

clean that light is.

Now if you look at this photograph right

now, do you see how the wall to

the left is looking a little bit bright?

Because I've included it in the frame.

One, I can crop it out, or I

can simply just bring my flash a little

bit further backwards.

So whenever you use this technique and one

side of the photograph is a bit brighter

than the other, you grab the flash and

you just slightly turn it this way.

And let's do that as well as crop

it out the wall, and actually that is

beautiful.

So what we're doing guys is we're creating

the short side.

If we just full flash bang right on

the couple, there's going to be no shadows,

it's there's no beautiful luxury to the face,

there's no shadow at all.

I want to create that beautiful depth and

dimension and create the short side, therefore bouncing

the flash off a wall, going back on

their face, and then of course the light

does not hit on this side of the

face or at least completely, and that's how

it works.

So now if Lisa is standing perfectly front

onto me, and let's say she was a

nervous bride and standing right in front, I

can't move anywhere, well as in I don't

really have much space to move, but she's

very nervous looking right at me or looking

above my shoulder, and I want to shoot,

I create the short side of the face,

then I need to take one step to

the right.

So if I take one step to the

right like this, then now although very, very

subtly her nose is slightly that way.

So I come here and again you can

basically see how I've actually created that short

side with one on-camera flash.

Do not think about the flash as your

light source, you have to think about where

it's bouncing off.

Now I know what you're also thinking right

now, you're thinking what happens if I have

nothing to bounce off?

What happens if I've got red or blue

or green walls?

What happens if I'm actually outdoors and again

there is nothing to bounce off?

Well there's always an answer, certainly you can

use the modifiers that are out there at

the moment, a lot of them work really

well, but really to be honest you want

to work fast, you want to work easy,

and sometimes when you have the big weight

of a modifier on your flash it can

be tough, you might be on your own,

you might not have any assistance and it's

quite tough.

So what we're going to do is we're

actually going to go outside and we're going

to literally, it's nighttime right now, we're going

to bounce off a wall about 30-40

feet away and we're going to show you

just how easy it is to create this

kind of a look outdoors and then I'm

going to go right on the street where

you can't really bounce off anything and what

will we do in that situation under the

circumstances.