One of the best techniques for using (and reasons for purchasing) an external flash is to bounce its light off the ceiling. This creates softer skin tones and a journalistic look.
Photographer Bill Harvey was awarded the lifetime achievement award in 1997 by the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles. He showed me the setup that I still use with unfailingly excellent results, as everyone always agrees.
Bill used a Vivitar 283, still available today, mounted on a pistol grip. With the 283, you just set the ISO, switch the removable sensor to one of several distance settings, and look up the color-coded distance setting on the illuminated dial to find the correct f-stop. But Bill never shot the flash directly at his subject. Instead, he pointed it upward, toward a small plastic reflector like. Sto-Fen makes several accessories for the 283, as well as Canon and Sunpak strobes.
The Sto-Fen reflector for bounce-flash photography
Bill used Sto-Fen's Twin Panel Bounce. Its compact, clever design eliminates hot spots and covers 24mm lenses and larger. Digicam zooms generally aren't wider than 28mm (speaking in 35mm equivalents). I also like their Omni Bounce, which is a white plastic dome with a black panel on the back that sits right on top of the 283 lens. It gives an even softer shadow than the Twin Panel but doesn't have quite the range. Both bounces come with a black plastic mount that just snaps over the 283? very simple, elegant, portable, and reliable.
If the head of your flash pivots upward, you can also bounce the light from your flash with a rubber band and the back of a business card. This disperses the illumination. Some flashes even include a bounce card built into the head.
The 283's removable light sensor is an important feature. You can mount the removable sensor on the camera's hot shoe but move the light around to other positions and still get good exposures. I've rigged up a Vivitar 283 to a Nikon CoolPix 990. This isn't sophisticated dedicated flash circuitry precision, but it keeps the sensor with the camera; after all, that's where the exposure is made.
Bill would add an external battery pack to power his Vivitar, but I find that today's NiMH AA rechargeables handle the job with power to spare.
I like to move the flash an arm's length away, up high or even to the other side of the camera, depending on the subject. I know the sensor will adjust to whatever I want to do, rather than force me to do something the flash expects. I can comfortably wave the flash around, because it's mounted on a nice, molded Vivitar grip. The grip pops on and off a bracket that attaches to the camera via its tripod mount. It couldn't be simpler.
The whole rig is a bit ostentatious—it makes me look like I actually know what I'm doing—but it's actually easy and natural to use. And it's a lot of fun to be able to paint the picture with the light of the flash.
Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Websites for Photographers
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