Single flash setup's

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Thomas247

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So I am not familiar with flashes and this will be my first setup... I have a ttl flash, some ttl wireless receivers, a light stand and a softbox, I want to take some pictures of my friend (who is a bodybuilder) in a gym environment. I have obviously taken portraits before but any advice on how to approach this would be good.. Like should I use auto area AF instead of single point AF and foget about focusing on the eye and concentrate more on the physique...? Also is centre weighted metering the best way to go?...I want to use the flash at a 45 degree angle just above the height of the subjects head and at about 4-5 metres away...should I just get the setting locked down in the camera first and use the exposure comp to under expose it a little, then manually use the flash at the lowest power and increase power untill a get the desired look? Also I seen some one use the flash in ttl off camera, how does the flash know the distance of the subjest and what power to use? Sorry for the 21 questions, any help would be appreciated
 
You've made some assumptions here that are largely questionable. I'm going to assume you want to show off his muscle?

You do that with light, the usual lighting pattern for this is 3 lights - google bodybuilder images and you'll see that they're commonly lit with 2 lights from behind the subject pointing back at the camera and then a fill light on the camera axis.

With careful posing you can put one light behind the subject as above and use a reflector to bounce some back, it'll probably need a tweak in PP to get the right shadow / highlight contrast - but doable. This would work for only a small number of poses though.

Back to your assumptions.

Always focus on the eyes if they're visible - people look weird when you focus elsewhere

In a studio type setting, you're best using manual flash settings so the camera meter will be doing nothing.

You can use the histogram and the screen on the back of the camera if you don't have a flash meter - start off at 200 ISO and 1/4 power and work from there.

4-5 metres away is loads too much, you should aim to get your lights as close as practical - A 2ft softbox at 5 metres is effectively a point light source (no longer a softbox) you're just wasting power.

A bare flash might give you more what you want than the softbox

Hope that helps (I've never shot a bodybuilder)
 
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Very cool video. Thanks for the share.
Gaz
 
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