some shots, SB28 on a PC cord

[Sneakyracer]

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=318010

Some shots looke dgood in the viewfinder but when opened in pshop were a little dark. The wall is white. Maybe I shoulved used a second flash as a background light.

[Tom V]

Sneaky,

I like the shots regardless of the non-white background. But, I can understand you wanting a white (whiter) background as well. A clean background can almost always give a different look to a shot.

Visualizing the effects of flash photography is difficult, especially with a plain flash. Studio strobes and a few portable flashes have modeling lamps that roughly simulate the effect the "flash" light will have. Digital camera to the rescue! Too bad Polaroid of old!

Visualizing the effect of flash photography is greatly aided by the LCD screen and especially the Histogram. The LCD screen is good for judging composition, lighting and gross exposure. The Histogram is great for judging exposure and contrast.

The average white wall in a home is not very white. To make it appear white on film or in a unadjusted digital image, you have to overexpose it. You need to make the near white even whiter. In order for your subject to be properly exposed, you have to treat the two (subject and background) as two items.

To make sure your white is really white, use your histogram. After you have your model and composition basically set, determine the exposure required to get a white background. Take the model out of the set and shoot just the background. You want the histogram to show a mound of pixels (a spike or mountain) on the far right side of the histogram. If the highlight pixel mound/spike/mountain is not all the way to the right, you will not have a white background. Open the aperture a click or two and try again. Once the background is pure white, put the model in and shoot another exposure. If the model is too light, modify the light with a diffuser (cloth, screen, etc.) and try again. If you have to move or modify the flash, or modify the light falling on the background, you should test the background exposure again.

With the proper exposure determined and set to make the background pure white, your histogram will always show pixels on the far right of the histogram, even with the model in the shot. You have to learn to ignore those kind of highlights (and specular highlights) in the histogram. See my posts about shooting snow in June - the helmet had the sun's reflection in it, so I always was going to have pixels loaded up on the right of the histogram.

You can take the background pixels out of the equation by eliminating the white background. Move in close on the model to crop out the backgound, or block the light off the background. Shoot an evaluation exposure of just the model to check the histogram. You want the model's contribution to the histogram to be normal.

It is possible to light all this with one flash in several ways:

1) Have your flash feathered - aimed at the wall, with some main spill on the model.

2) Have a diffuser or screen between the flash and the model, but not the flash and the wall.

3) Have the flash closer to the wall than it is to the model. (Kind of a backlighting I suppose.)

4) Bounce the flash off the wall onto the model.

5) Have bounce fill cards around the background to keep as much light on it as possible, but no fill cards on the model.

6) Other techinques.

7) Any combination of the above.

Adding a second light makes it a lot easier. Adding more might be easier or more confusing.

If you really want to go nuts, shoot a full length shot of a blonde wearing white on a white background, and try to keep the background pure white without loosing the model or the clothes. Ad a white or black cat to be "artsy." Get ready to smack anyone who tells you they want the lighting "dramatic."

[Sneakyracer]

Tom thanks for the detailed reply. I find digital so liberating. I woulve spent $24 on polaroid film for my pentax67 on that shot. This was a very casual shoot in her small 10x10 room (shes my GF). I took all pictures in like 10 min. It was late and she was coming back from a pro photo shoot for a line of clothing.
It was funny, I had the S2 on one hand and the SB28 on the other. Also I shot in jpg mode at 2,304 x 1,536 pixels, wb daylight, everything else STD. I think the shot with the whiter background came out that way because i aimed the flash a bit to the back wall. I tride used the flash behind her, pointiog at the side wall but didnt work, I got blown highlights on her chin and the rest of the face was too dark.