Chapter 3 ✦Flash Photography Basics 69

✦Even illumination is desired. If
you’re taking a photo of a scene
where you want more even light-
ing throughout the frame, bounce
flash helps you more evenly illumi-
nate the entire area. Examples are
when taking photos where you
want both the foreground and
background evenly lit. Using a
bounced flash results in more bal-
anced lighting in both the fore-
ground and background.
✦Shooting portraits. Directly lit
portrait subjects can result in harsh
skin tones. Speedlights do a great
job in illuminating your subjects,
but when it comes to portraits, too
good of a job sometimes isn’t
wanted. A well-exposed portrait
using a Speedlight can result in
harsh skin tones. To achieve that
softened portrait look, bounce your
Speedlight off the ceiling.
Camera and Speedlightsettings
When you have the SB-800 or SB-600
mounted on your camera, you can easily tilt
the flash head to bounce the light off the
ceiling or even the walls. When bouncing
light off the ceiling, position the flash head
to a 50- to 60-degree angle. For best results,
bounce the flash off surfaces that are 3 to 7
feet from the flash.
When using bounce flash, you need to posi-
tion your Speedlight flash head, make cam-
era settings, and make adjustments to your
Speedlight:
1. Set your camera’s exposure
mode to the desired setting.
Whether you prefer using Aperture,
Program, Automatic, or Shutter-
priority mode, make sure you have
your desired exposure mode set in
your camera.
2. Set the white balance. Set your
digital camera’s white balance set-
ting to Flash or Auto. Setting your
digital camera to a Flash white bal-
ance setting fixes the camera at
the same color temperature as the
light emitted by the Speedlight.
3. Set the flash mode. Make sure
that the flash mode set on your
Speedlight is set to TTL or Auto
Aperture. You can toggle to the
desired flash mode by pressing the
Mode button on your SB-800 or
SB-600 Speedlight.
4. Position the flash head. Tilt or
rotate the Speedlight’s head by
pressing the lock release button
and positioning the flash head to
the desired position. Both the SB-
600 and the SB-800 Speedlights
can tilt up 90 degrees (straight up)
and rotate horizontally 180
degrees to the left and 90 degrees
to the right.
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