A star ruby photographed with and without the flash. This is a dramatic example of what a flash can do.
This report covers:
- Flash is hard to learn!
- 24 chances
- HOWEVER
- Light decreases with the square of the distance
- Summary
Today I will discuss flash photography. This may not be the last time the topic comes up but this report will be dedicated to it.
In the 1970s and ’80s it always surprised me to watch professional football games on television and see hundreds of flashes fire in the stands when a play was made. Either those people were unaware their flash was firing or they didn’t know how to turn it off. A few of them might even have thought their flash would light up the entire playing field.
The flash on those old point and shoot cameras was good for about 10 feet at the maximum. Beyond that ambient light illuminated the scene.
Flash is hard to learn!
When I started The Airgun Letter newsletter I relied on a Nikon 35mm film camera and an array of digital flashes. I knew nothing about taking pictures. Heck, the world I lived in had only recently gone from black and white to color and I have the photos that prove it! That’s a joke that only the photographers will get, just so you know.
24 chances
In those days you loaded your camera with film. I typically loaded a roll of 24 exposures. Out of that many chances I would get up to three semi-useable photos if all went right. I learned to bracket my shots with different lens aperture settings and different exposure times, so each shot used up six to nine exposures.
When the roll was fully exposed I took it to a local lab and waited three to five days to get the prints that then had to be scanned into the document. Oh, and I had to pay for the film to be developed and printed.
One time when I was in a super crunch because I had travelled a long way to get a certain picture I was dismayed when the lab told me their developer (an electronic machine) had failed and my roll was ruined. But at least they gave me another roll of film for free. But the three days of travel and the 800 miles I went for the image were non-refundable.
Today’s digital cameras allow you to take multiple shots then select the best one and dump the rest in minutes. There is no cost for development — either in time or money. And the “brain” in your camera knows what settings to use, so most of your shots turn out fine to begin with.
HOWEVER
Yes, there is a however. I will teach you two things today about using a flash. I already taught you one when I showed you in Part 2 the typical black silhouette people get when they lay a dark airgun on a white background. Now it’s time to learn flash lesson number two. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.
Oh no, BB, not that stuff! That is what Mr. Saltis tried to teach me in the eighth grade and I told him I would never need to know it. Now you are telling me the same thing. What does it mean?
Allow me to demonstrate. I will show two photos and you pick which one looks best.
Quick — who made this revolver and what caliber is it?
An adjustment of the camera angle of 15-20 degrees did this.
The ONLY change that was made between the first and second photo of the revolver was a 15-20 degree difference in the camera angle. In the first shot the camera looked straight down at the revolver and the light from the flash bounced straight back and overwhelmed the charge-coupled device (CCD) — the computer chip in the camera that captures the image. In the second shot the revolver was moved about three inches which changed the angle of the light from the flash so it did not bounce straight back at the CCD. I did nothing to enhance the second image beyond moving the revolver.
I could say more about the second image — that you can see the ribs in the grip better, and the color case hardening of the hammer and trigger (especially the trigger) stand out better. The second image is a good photo that’s useable, compared to the first one. And with enhancement through PhotoShop it can be made to look even better.
Mr. Saltis didn’t explain it this way but that is what the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection means. Change the angle the camera looks to change the amount of light that enters the lens. More of the light bounces away from the lens.
Light decreases with the square of the distance
This is flash lesson number three. Remember those folks taking flash photography in the stadium? This is what they didn’t know. And it is something that can help you use your flash.
In part 2 I showed you how I took a closeup of a front sight. Remember that?
To get this photo …
… I did this.
I backed up from the image I wanted, which was the muzzle of the rifle and I set the blue backdrop well behind it. I had the backdrop move as the photo was exposed which made it appear like a perfectly even blue. And distance was my friend in this shot because the flash would have overwhelmed the image if it had been too close.
Before anyone jumps in to tell you, this is called the Inverse Square Law. Remember that term if you want but remember what it does and you will take better photographs of your airguns.
Summary
There are several fundamental lessons in this report. They all deal with light and anyone who sees your photos will know whether you have used them.
BB,
I love the lesson shown in those two revolver pics…great stuff!
Thank you; I really need (and appreciate!) these photography lessons. 🙂
Blessings to you,
dave
Dave,
I wish someone had taught me these things when I started. I had to learn them the hard way.
🙂
LOL! I remember black and white! I had a fully manual Minolta 35mm with a very nice selection of lenses. I remember waiting days to see if my pictures were worth having. I recall spending what I considered a small fortune only to find there was not one usable photo on an entire roll. Those were the days!
I almost never use a flash. I have learned over the years that there is usually enough “ambient light” for most of my photographic needs. Often, I find I have too much light.
I thank you for your lessons you have learned over the years. I like to think I have learned something from your experiences. Believe it or not, I sometimes pay attention to what you say. 😉
P.S. The photo of the saphire on the right sure is pretty.
RR,
Ditto on the Minolta, IIRC mine was the “100” and it had the advanced feature: a built-in light meter!
Hank,
Mine did also, but it seemed to quickly go South. Ah well, it is long gone now.
BB,
My photography teacher told me to expect one useable shot on a 36 exposure roll. ( late 70’s.)
rk
Thanks for another excellent report. Anyone else remember the one-time-use flash bulb days? I saw an amazing photo on line recently that was not a flash photo (as far as I know). The pro photographer apparently captured a speeding bullet just after it hit Donald Trump’s right ear. I think that the shutter speed must have been a very fast one. But I didn’t see the shutter speed specified.
Elmer,
Yeah, I remember those one-use flash bulbs. Used them on my Brownie 127 format box camera that I bought for $6.00 (way, way back then!).
Hank
Yes, what a lucky photo. Had an argument with two friends that the camera shutter wasn’t fast enough to capture the speeding round. I pointed out my “cheap” Lumix GX85 has an electronic shutter speed up to 1/16,000 of a second but doing the math – the 223 round travels around 2700 fps at the muzzle. 140 yards later, maybe it’s slowed to 2500 fps? So a shutter speed of only 1/1000 of a second would record a blur of the round moving over 2.5′. Plus, since the photographer was shooting up into the sky, I imagine his flash was also going off for fill as the sky would be too bright to get a good shot of Mr. Trump’s face. It illuminated the round, I suspect. Not an impossible photography shot. I remember being able to watch .22 shorts and slower moving pellets’ flight if the light was just right when my eyesight was better.
I imagine Mr. Trump might be thinking about religion and/or who was sitting on his shoulder Saturday night.
Fred formerly of Demokratik Peeples Republik of NJ now happily in GA
Wow, this brings back memories of high school photo class. No flash. Bracketing shots. Black and white film. Developed our own film in a real dark room (it was real dark and it was a real room). Made our own prints, too.
I remember the flash bulb cubes that rotated to give you four flashes. I remember being fascinated by the appearance of the burned out ones.
Feeling a bit better today. Not stuck in first gear. Maybe a good day to organize the airgun collection and find those round tuits.
BB,
As a long time photographer I’m enjoying this series. I had my own darkroom setup for decades and quickly learned that was where the magic happened; that the camera was only an accessory.
You talked about the “how” part of the controls, thought I’d add a couple of comments that might help with the “why” part of understanding cameras. Knowing/understanding the exposure overrides is important.
Film or a CCD sensor requires sufficient volume of light to see/record an image. There are interrelated three factors that control the volume of light: aperture size; shutter speed and film/sensor sensitivity (ISO).
The camera software is pretty good at getting the exposure correct (most of the time), but the programmers don’t know what you are taking pictures of and what the lighting conditions are so they make assumptions and presume that the scene is “average”. To take good pictures you need to recognize when your subject is not “average” and know how to override the cameras’ compensation exposure controls.
BB mentioned “bracketing”. Bracketing is where you take a series of pictures with different exposure settings to get an image which is usable; some cameras can be setup to do this automatically. The reason we bracket is because the camera (film or light sensor) has a limited range of brightness which it can capture. Like our eyes, the camera can’t see details that are too bright or too dark. Think of it like trying to measure (record) a 5 foot subject with a yardstick – you can only measure 3 feet so you have to choose what is important. The camera is going to presume that you want to measure the middle (average) but the highlights or the shadows may contain the important details so you will need to make adjustments to the camera controls or to the lighting to capture what you want.
The camera makes all of its adjustments based on what it believes are average (18% grey) light meter readings and adjusts the exposure accordingly. So, unless you compensate and bias the camera to suit the real scene, a picture of a black cat in a coal mine or a white rabbit on a snow bank will be exposed to turn out 18% grey.
Photoshop (an Adobe program) is the digital equivalent of a darkroom where you can do amazing things to salvage or improve an image. Computer (Windows) and tablet (Android) operating systems have built-in photo editors and very powerful editors like Gimp are available for free. It’s well worth while getting a basic familiarity with these programs as many adjustments can be made after the fact.
Exposure compensation with images is like trajectory compensation while shooting, a bit of knowledge goes a long way towards hitting what we want.
Cheers!
Hank
I almost do not have pictures where I was a child. Photo stuff was expensive (for my parents at that time) and even with automatic camera (which I got when I was 11yo first) from 36 shots many were not usable. It was also expensive to develope them in some special store with studio. Actually, I have pictures from wedding partys and funerals only, when I was younger than 10. I remember one of the first digital cameras which my father showed me (the company he was working for bought it for really big money). It was simple as a bearing ball and had 640×480 pixel. At this time it was a trip to the future.
Now my boys have tausends of pictures and nobody cares 🙂 I have terabytes of family / vacatian / whatever pictures and videos, nobody is able to watch it all… And myself – with like 11 pictures from the childhood… so sad.
B.B.,
Great Primer series on photography.
For the History buffs:
I have taken many images in my life on film and digital format from many platforms. I saw my first all digital platform at the U.S. Naval Photographic Center in early 1975. The device was a Kodak military division product; boy did the film division ever mess up on that future business growth prediction.
The digital camera had its beginning in high altitude Astronavigation.
shootski
BB,
Thank you for the advice on photographing items like air guns and how to get the lighting right, or at least better than awful.
Here is a practice shot of this butt stock that is attached to this Daisy #25 BB gun, done with a care for choosing a medium value background to ease the contrast of subject and background. The angle of the light was one that showed for clear-ish detail and reduced glare. This is actually better than I normally do because I kept your tips in mind. Stripes are not ideal for the background, but it’s all I could find in the time allotted.
Making just the butt stock is less work than making a full stock and so this Daisy became a “patient” freshly in need of a butt graft. You might say it’s all ate up like a soup sandwich and I won’t disagree, but it has been fun to do.
The main thing I wanted to do was to practice carving a pistol grip that has enough bulk for me to hold onto, with no air gaps between my hand and the wood. The grip should have a palm swell that BB speaks so highly of. It should be comfortable to hold and the trigger finger should naturally find the trigger with the middle of the pad.
That is an ideal. Well, I removed some of that palm swell with a carving error, but the grip still fills the hand nicely while shooting. The next one will be better. The wood is black walnut over fir, sealed with linseed oil. It’s big and goofy looking, but I like it!
Cheers! Speedy recovery BB!
Will
Will,
I like big and goofy-looking. See it in the mirror all the time! 😉
BB
Soup sandwich? More like shark fin soup.
That stock is radical, but so cool. Like a classic Cadillac.
I mean no offense, but I am compelled to crack a good-natured joke. With your trusty Daisy 25 by your side, you’ll never find yourself up a creek without a paddle. ;o)
BTW, great photo. I can see all the detail, even at the relatively modest resolution allowed by the blog.
Romin, I thought “shark fin” too. I’m glad you found the pic passable and yes, I’ll be fine in the canoe if I lost my paddle while plinking out among the reeds! What would you plink at out in a canoe? Jellychuck would be neutrally bouyant, so he’s out.
These BB guns are so much fun! It’s a completely different kind of shooting experience than with a pellet rifle, at ten shots for three cents. I’m frugal too. I’ll have to chrony them because they hit with a sharp thwack and I’d like to quantify that.
Will S.,
“What would you plink at out in a canoe?”
Nutria (Myocastor coypus)
https://nutria.com/nutria-control-program/coastwide-nutria-control-program/application/
US $6.00/Nutria
shootski
If any of you are interested in historical photography, mostly images from “slides” or “diapositives,” you might want to hook up to this link – http://www.pixpast.com