Bouncing Off the Ceiling

There's nothing like paying a lot of money to attend a flash photography seminar only to find out that what you thought you knew about flash amounts to squat.

Such is how I felt after attending David Hobby's Strobist seminar last weekend in Orlando.
Oh well, no where to go but up. And speaking of up, a perfect segue into today's topic -

Bounce flash: Using the ceiling to create a huge light source

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After attending the seminar, I promptly gave myself two assignments:

* Learn one technique and master it... in this case bouncing a flash off a ceiling.

* Create a picture using one strobe showing people having fun even though they wear braces.

Along with learning the technique, I gave myself this creative assignment to try to capture something more than just a picture testing a lighting technique.

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Assignment: Using one strobe, create a picture showing people having fun even though they wear braces.

Technical Details:

Location: Living room at my house.

Subject: Two young girls wearing braces.

Flash: A single SB-800 in manual mode just off camera left on extended light stand near ceiling; 1/8 power; bounced off ceiling; head at 30 degree angle. Flash and light stand seven (7) feet from subjects.

Trigger: Pocket Wizards

Ambient light types: Mixed tungsten/CFL fluorescent lights; starting ambient exposure: f/4 @ 1/4 sec at ISO 400.

Final Exposure: f/4 @ 1/250 sec at ISO 400 - a six (6) stop difference (seven if you count the actual speeds) between the ambient exposure and the flash exposures. This is more than enough flash to nuke the ambient tungsten. By the way, f/4 @ 1/30 balances the strobe with the ambient (slowing down the shutter speed 1/30 from 1/250.

Flash: 1/8 power.

White Balance: Flash

Camera: hand-held

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Technique notes:

I started by picking a random flash power setting of 1/64 power, and then made a test exposure at f/4 @ 1/250, while chimping the TFT screen to view the histogram. The image was underexposed so I simply dialed up the power of the flash from 1/64 and chimped until I got an acceptable image using my desired aperture/shutter speed combination of f/4 @ 1/250. In this case, my flash power increased four stops to 1/8 power.

Note: For this image I didn't need a lot of depth-of-field, so f/4 @ 1/250 at 1/8 flash power allowed me to pop multiple exposures quickly without having to wait for the flash to recycle for 2 or 3 seconds. Had I had to wait on the flash to recycle, I would have missed the outright laugh of the two friends, which was the point of the assignment.
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Question:

Had I still needed more light to kill the ambient cast, how would I have done it without changing the exposure setting of f/4@1/250?

Answer:

Dial up the power on the strobe from 1/8 power to a higher power factor, say 1/4 or 1/2 power, and then chimp until your exposure is correct.