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| Okay, this wasn't on purpose. Apparently when you mess around with the XA's flash mode it gets kind of confused and leaves the shutter open for longer than it should. Notice the funky diamond bokeh from the XA's 4-blade aperture. |
Okay okay, so Terry Richardson still does it and always has, with his cute little drop shadow on the white background. But other than that, on-axis flash has kind of disappeared in favor of the quite costly fast-lens/high-ISO combo. On-axis flash is kind of a symbol of the 80's and 90's, before radio triggers got big. There's not much light around, so you have to make your own and you have to take it with you. Foreheads get hot and backgrounds go black, but it doesn't matter because everyone is having a good time. However it's incredibly obnoxious because it's pretty much a 12-gauge blast of photons to the face while your pupils are wide open from the dark.
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| Olympus XA with A11 Flash, Ilford HP5+ |
I think it's worth it sometimes, though.
A low-light shot looks a lot more like how things looked at the time you took the photo, but the thing about low light is, sometimes it kind of sucks. It can suck even with your f/1.4 lens and your 12800 ISO. If you give me a choice, I'd rather light with anything other than an overhead halogen and a little tea candle on the table.
I forgot who it was who said, "I am an available light shooter. Sometimes my flash is available."
Usually in the studio you have flash modifiers, softening everything and spreading it out evenly over your subjects. You also get to actually be in control over everything -- a luxury you usually don't have when you're out and about.
Unmodified flash has a chiaroscuro effect. It's just a focused cone of light in a single direction. It makes harsh, contrasty shadows that wash out curves and accentuates crags, but it also separates what is from what isn't.
The reason a lot of flash photos suck is because everyone is looking straight at the camera and grinning. What happens is, the forehead goes normal to the direction of flash and goes completely white and shiny/greasy looking. The same happens for the rest of the face to a slightly lesser effect.
Flash is best used when things are happening. It's not ideal for capturing details and facial features, but it's perfect for illustrating the things that are happening. You need to overpower the former with the latter. Because the light is coming from the same direction as the point of view, everything is just shown as what it is.
I don't find having to work with flash as a hindrance because the way things happen is more important to me than the way things look. I just feel a little bad for the subjects sometimes. Since I've been shooting rangefinders I've been able to see how bright things get through the viewfinder without the VF blackout, and it's pretty damn bright.
this is awesome, really couldn't agree more with everything said here, and actually i've been mulling over purchasing a metz 45 to go with my gw690 that I sort've alluded to in another comment, and I think this just put me over the edge.
ReplyDeletealso
"I am an available light shooter. Sometimes my flash is available."
lmao never heard that, great quote
Not sure if you've gone in on it already, but the GW690 is already a beast of a camera, and sticking a flash on it would make it even crazier to deal with. Also, the rangefinder does get really dim and difficult to use in low lighting.
ReplyDeleteRemember, these shots were taken with an Olympus XA, which is pretty much the opposite -- it's lightweight, tiny, and I was just zone focusing it without the rangefinder (you'll have a LOT less depth of field to work with if you're going medium format).
That said, don't let me tell you what not to do! If you can make that setup work, then the shots will look awesome. I just don't want you to have a bad first experience with it and get turned off to it, because the GW690 does take a bunch of getting used to just on its own.