Bare Speedlight



Deb Portrait

This is the first attempt at a portrait of my wife who reluctantly sat for me while i tried things out.
This shot was taken with a single speedlight 580 ex ii fired using 7ds built in wireless transmitter. I didn't want to have to much light so here is what i did :-

Strobist Info:-

• Camera - Canon Eos 7D
• Lens - Tamron AF 17-50mm F2.8 XR Di II LD Aspherical (IF) at 50mm
• Shutter - 1/250th sec
• Aperture - F10
• Iso - 100
• Flash - Canon Speedlight 580ex ii

After trying several setups i liked this shot the best which was just a head shot in landscape orientation with subject offset. The camera was set to manual mode with a fast shutter speed of 1/250th this cut out the ambient light from the Christmas light in the room. The aperture is then used to control the amount of flash that reaches the sensor.

The speedlight was fired wirelessly had no modifiers attached however i did have the flash set to:-

• Manual mode
• 1/128th power
• zoomed to 105mm

The manual mode gives you the most control and the 1/128th power is the lowest power setting by having it zoomed to 105mm gives a narrower field of light.

The flash was hand held at eye level to camera left at about 10 inches from subject.By having the flash off camera to the side eliminated the reflections i would have got in the glasses had the flash just been on the hot shoe.

Hope you found this helpful and look forward to any comments.


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