Action Sports Cartel

Hey guys,

Hopefully someone can offer up some tips here. I shot an event this past Sunday where I was using two vivitar flashes, one 285 placed on the side and one 283 placed behind as a rim light. The 285 was set to 1/16 power and the 283 for the rim was set to 1/32 power. Now, admittedly the 285 was too close to the subject and thus was pretty hot. I couldn't really move it back any further and didn't have any light modifiers with me at the time, so I left it as is. My 283 in the back seemed okay, but was probably a bit hot as well.

My question is, with such low ambient light (the ambient exposure was reading 1/15 @ 2.8 iso 400) how could I have lit this differently to avoid the harsh shadows and still freeze the action? My final exposure for this image was 1/90 @ f3.2 iso 400. I know placing the flashes further away would have softened the light as well as using some sort of diffusion or soft box, but those options were not available at the time.
Is there a general consensus that small hot shoe flashes such as these are not good when there is such little ambient light and you are trying to balance everything and make the light appear even? I'm thinking it's time to step up to some larger strobes which have a larger light source and the ability to use different size light modifiers. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

-A

off the top moving a flash further away won't soften light, it actually makes light harder; a light further away is effectively a smaller light source, making harder shadows. However as you mentioned diffusion would help with the shadow edge transfer (crisp edges to shadows vs soft transitions to shadows)

I don't think larger strobes are the answer here, you already had your flashes at a really low level, big strobes are really only answers when you need big light (or very very fine tune control of the light qualities you want) if you toss an umbrella on a stand i think you'd get what you are looking for.

I think the answer to your problem is taking your rim light, and moving it around to the runner's right side and use it as fill. The rim is really blasting out his left arm which looks really gross.
take the rim, put it on the right side of the frame, have it just fill in the shadows (not destroy the shadows) and you'll be doing great.

could you bump the iso up to get a bit more ambient in there?

I carry a couple of small softbox diffusers in my pack that fit on my 285's. They fold up flat to take almost no space and can be put on in seconds.

Damn, i just wrote a long response and then I lost it!

Oh well, here goes again..

Reuben,

I remember watching a video awhile back that explained distance of the light source and how that affects the shadows, but can't find it now. I was just thinking that if I had moved the flash further away from the subject the light would have been less intense and spread more, which in turn would create less of a shadow. Is this correct?

I know it's hard to see the shadow on this image, but on some others where they had their arms higher and were wearing lighter colors, it is really evident.

I totally agree with you that I should have just used an umbrella to get softer light and placed another flash to the right as fill. I only had two flashes with me however and I thought the rim light would look interesting, although I wasn't expecting it to be so intense. Really, what I wanted to do was balance the flash + ambient so the lighting looked more natural. The harsh shadows also bother me and is something I've fought with for awhile. Nice, crisp shadows are great for some applications, but for this type of action work, I'd prefer to eliminate or at least reduce the amount of shadows. I believe this is just due to not using umbrellas or any soft boxes of any kind and just using bare flashes.

Another question I have is regarding the height of flashes. I've had good luck placing my flashes low in order to illuminate the eyes and face (sometimes hidden inside a helmet for bikers), but I'm wondering if there is any way to improve on this. Do you typically place your flashes at different heights depending on where the subject will be in the frame, or do you have a standard height that you go with?

Dave,

Are you happy with the small softboxes? Does the light wrap nicely with them or are the shadows still pretty crisp? I'm only familiar with the photoflex softboxes for hot shoe flashes. Are those the ones you have? I thought about getting one awhile back, but just never got around to it and instead picked up a couple stofen omni-bounce's. The omni-bounce works great for bouncing light indoors, however I'm not sure how much good it does outdoors if any. It just diffuses the light a bit, but doesn't make the light source any bigger like a softbox would.

Thanks for the help guys!

-A

I've got Lumiquest softboxes www.lumiquest.com/products/softbox.htm

They definitely take the harshness out of the flash and blends the shadow a bit. I don't recall them being too expensive so it's definitely worth picking one up seeing how it works for you. I've used umbrellas out in the forest before too, but that usually seems more hassle than it's worth. Trying to get them balanced usually on uneven ground can be a pain.

for lighting distance i think you are confusing a couple different things.

when a light is closer or further from a subject, it will hit a subject with more or less light (when you are really close a light hits you with a lot more light)
when the light its further away, and its effective power is less, and the light covers a larger area (both because the light is spreading out)

when you said 'soft' that is normally a property of a larger light source creating less defined shadows (on a sunny day there is a sharp shadow behind you, cloudy day the whole sky is a softbox and you have much less of a shadow)

lights are less powerful further away; inverse square law (google that term)
lights farther away hit more stuff
larger light sources create softer light (softbox on strobe)