Advice please (child/baby pic)

Hans,

I understand the instinct to bonce the flash off the ceiling. That works well if you are further away from the subject. For a shot close like this one I prefer to put the diffuser on the front of the flash. That is what I do around the house and such.

Enjoy,
Scott

 

Hans, I can't understand what you have done here. Based on the dark shadows it apprears that your flash was below the level of your lens. Normally when you bounce flash it helps eliminate the dark shadows in the background where in this case it has actually increased them. You also have a real hot spot on the boys arm which again says this was not a bounce flash but rather a strait on flash.

What were your camera setting when making this flash picture? Was the flash in iTTL? The kids are darling but the harshness of the flash ruins the effect.

 

Hans,

Was the ceiling flat or sloped?

 

Shadow pattern certainly doesn't look like ceiling bounce to me, though Jeff (Klofft) may be onto something with the sloped ceiling idea.

 

Wau, my forte (though I'm not much good at it!)...

I love shooting children. In your first example, the flash actually looks like it was off camera to the left, or shoe mounted, perhaps pointing straight up, which in effect points it to a wall when in portrait orientation?

The second shot looks more like a typical bounce shot.

In the first shot, I love the lighting effect on the girl's face, and I also love the interaction with the baby. Seems that you were too close though, and blew out the baby's white shirt. I'd either change the shirt color to a darker one, or crop a little tighter so the blown portion doesn't show up in the shot.

The second one he looks a bit uncomfortable. I'm guessing he's not at the age where he can sit by himself yet? I've used props when I did this - things like stuffed animals for them to lean on and anything and everything. I have quite a few with my daughther mounted on a watermellon, a bag of nuts, and even a 1g water jug.

It also looks a bit underexposed, maybe like 1/3 stop?

Here's a bounce shot (off the ceiling) that I need to rework - seems to have a bit of a yellow cast:

 

I'm thinking "Hey! Now there is some nice bright sunny color! I like it."

Then I read your caption. :shock:

 

Too much distracting items in the shot (plus I agree with Gordon - from the position of the shadows there is no way the flash was bounced off the ceiling). For more ideas on shooting babies have a look at my website, specifically at the baby pages:-

http://www.carolsteele.co.uk/pages/babies.html

 

Hans,

Why the -.7 ev?

 

Ahh, the diffusion dome. In that case most of the light hitting the kids is coming directly from the flash, not the ceiling, becuase it looks like you're pretty close to them judging from the perspective and the diffusion dome sends light in all direction (including forwards). You probably would have gotten better results in the particular case with pure ceiling bounce (flash head pointed straight up, no diffusion dome).

 

Jeff,
Thanks for that info about the diffusion dome..I had no idea about that...I use the dome often and never considered that it would go in all directions.

Thanks,

Gaye