Backdrops for food photography are heavy enough. Everything else should be as lightweight and mobile as possible. Sure, speedlights do not provide as much light as studio lighting strobes. But you can easily carry them to a variety of locations. For the most part, the light output from a speedlight is enough for food photography. After all, I often only shoot small plates as opposed to dealing with large sets such as in fashion shoots. Moreover, a speedlight uses its own source of power.
And with the right modifier , a Speedlight can look like natural light. Most of the time, I put my Speedlight behind a large diffuser to get a big soft light source, which works like a window.
Or you can also bounce the light from the white wall. Of course, we know that a camera flash is small. But using a diffuser makes its light output larger. You can use your flash to lift the shadows and reveal details on your subject if they are backlit. If you want to create a silhouette, speedlighting can help with that, too.
To create a glowing outline of your subject, all you have to do is place your camera flash behind it. Speed lighting is a great way to create a fascinating night or dusk portraits. In this image by Vasiliy Us , you can see how Marina is standing right in front of a Speedlight.
By using a warm gel filter on the flash, he made it look like a regular street light. In fog, the light from the flash may result in gorgeous shining rays. Speedlights are small. They produce a hard light with dark and pronounced shadows.
You can take advantage of this harshness and high contrast. Not every subject looks good with very dark shadows and very bright highlights. But crystals and flowers in glass jars surely do! Then you can add some contrast and direction to the lighting and make your subject pop. For this shot, I used a Speedlight inside a small strip box, from which I removed a diffusing cloth. Doing so allowed me to achieve a hard light and, consequently, brighter highlights from glass jars.
Hard light may be useful when you want to go for an outer space feeling. Take a look at photos from Moon. No atmosphere means no soft light, so the shadows should be very distinct. Using speedlights to get hard light with sharp contrast also useful for revealing texture and making things pop. Look at this pineapple by Eduard Zhukov. Another thing you can do is to shoot high contrast objects on vibrant backgrounds and create patterns with a slight nod to pop-art aesthetics.
I especially like this example by Eduard Zhukov , because it combines strong texture and vibrant colors. Speedlights are powerful enough to create a blindingly white background , which is excellent for a variety of shots. Just place your Speedlight behind any kind of diffusing material white cloth or layout paper. If you place the diffusion panel as I did with the photo below, you can shoot fantastic compositions with rain.
Water droplets glow in this type of lighting. I recreated the mood of April showers or deep autumn by pouring water through the kitchen strainer. Gather some tree branches with green leaves. Attach them with a transparent adhesive tape to your diffuser covering the entire surface. Place the camera flash behind the leaves and add a reflector to lift the shadows. It looks great for any tabletop photography where you need to show something as natural or organic.
While some speedlight flashes like this LumoPro are manual-only with variable power outputs, others offer TTL options for automatic exposure, which can be nice if you are shooting a wedding or an event where the lighting scenarios can change quickly. Auto is often the four letter word for forgettaboutit.
Most speedlight flashes run on double AA batteries, which can be replaced with better performing rechargeables like Eneloops. Better units will allow you to attach external battery packs and even AC cords for faster recycling times and longer use without having to replace or recharge the batteries. So there you have it! Speedlights or speedlites… whichever you prefer… are portable, lightweight, inexpensive on or off camera strobes that will allow you to enhance or control the light in your scene.
And remember gang, whatever flash you use, your best shot is your next shot! So keep learning, keep thinking, and keep shooting.
Joe Edelman Last Updated: September 6, 3 minutes read. Show More. The result is a decently lit subject, similar to the type of photo that a built-in pop up flash would produce. Notice how that colors pop more and the mask is more evenly lit compared to the photo shot in ambient light. However, aiming your flash straight forward can result in some harsh shadows, not to mention cause human photo subjects to be temporarily blinded by light flashing in their faces.
It is also very non-directional light making the subject appear flat and lacking dimension. In this case, the flash is aimed directly up at a white ceiling. When the flash is fired, the light is spread out onto the ceiling and reflected down on the subject. As a result, the front part of the mask from the eyes to the nose are nicely lit, but the mouth, ears, and ornamental headdress are left in the shadows. This is one of the pitfalls of simply bouncing the flash off the ceiling : the image will generally produce shadows on any protruding elements of your subject.
Bounced of the wall to the left of the camera. Alternatively, the flash can also be pointed directly at a nearby wall so the light is bounced in another angle.
In the above example, the flash was bounced off a white wall to the right of the mask. The result is more dramatic lighting that focuses on one side of the mask, using the shadows to indicate more depth.
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