An interesting collection that focuses on some of the finer details. You've certainly whet the viewer's appetite for exploration around the place!

I was surprised when I saw the zoom you were using, and I do find myself wanting to "step back" in quite a few of them .... the images you've taken are in the middle ground between wide views and close ups, the sort of things I imagine you would see if, whilst taking in an entire room, you suddenly turned around and looked at what was right behind you..... so they look like the things you weren't looking at, if that makes sense.

Maybe it does Peter, and certainly an apt representation don't you think .... you know, standing guard, ever watchful, ready to react to any spamming attack or to defend the forum terms and conditions!

That's a wide range of styles all done so well Derek. I think the very first one is the best for me.

. No, looks like he's going for the sale .....

Thanks Stuart and Derek. I can see this becoming a sort of a 'thing' ..... There's no shortage of suitable subject matter in this house!!

Just a bit of fun seeing what the potential was with some of the more photogenic kids toys from Christmas ...(Since I didn't get any for me!)

Little BB-8 from Star Wars was a good candidate, along with a couple of castle & Knight characters

K7, DFA 28-105, 2x Cactus RF60, Pentax AF-540FGZII, Cactus V6II Tx
ISO100, F9.5, 1/180th




















For those curious, (and you definately SHOULD try this at home folks!), I took some to show the set up ... trying to make use of a single high bookshelf to give the low perspective, and the patch of grey wallpaper behind. I used one flash with a "powersnoot" to light the wall with blue gels, a main flash in softbox and a fill light on umbrella .... you can see my beautiful studio













Because the Pentax flash with the snoot was facing the main softbox light, I didn't bother using a radio receiver with it, but just used the Slave 2 mode, which is very reliable.Working so close the direct manualpower adjustments were not a problem. But the Radio control over the highly placed softbox and umberella flashes was very convenient.

Yes, there's so much potential, but unfortunately the vast majority are not venturing beyond the familiar, or the idea that you don't need flash as the ISO can always be turned up ....

I try to show the mundane, everyday things that can be captured far better with some general practical flash techniques. I'm sure there's plenty of occasions when our cameras are staying in the cupboards, when they could be out in use creating images that no phone can do, if only the full utility of the DSLR system was being taken advantage of.

There's a member just above selling a flash after one use, because he "doesn't use flash" .....I wouldn't hi jack his thread out of courtesy, but I hope he looks wider to here and cancels his sale .....

This is Flash WB, as the main subjects are lit entirely by flash. There's a fine tuning tweak of 4 steps towards cool, because the walls are a creamy warm white, and flash takes on the colour cast from surfaces it bounced off.

I wasn't worried about the ambient WB, as it is so secondary to the images in this case.

You're welcome Richard, I hope it sparks some ideas for indoors flash use!

I think automatic or manual modes for flash comes down to the situation, and the amount of fluidity if things are changing. Certainly for on-camera work I always use P-TTL, its more efficient than trying to find a manual setting I believe. In this case, the ambient exposure was always going to be static, so Manual suited that, but I was moving around the table and getting different angles and distances, so for the subjects themselves and the foreground then P-TTL was best, as it automatically adjusts and accounts for the bounce angles and distances.

If the flash was off the camera, and therefore not moving around, then Manual would make sense .... although nowadays with the excellent Cactus XTTL firmware, I find there is very little practical workflow differences between Manual and TTL modes!

A flash failing to fire for one shot gave me the idea to show this example:

How the ambient and flash exposures are independent, and how powerful a single on-camera flash can be in controlling extreme contrast indoors ....

The scenario was a bit of birthday cake baking, with bright sunshine streaming in from the windows behind. This sunlight was creating very bright highlights on the wall but leaving the table area and faces facing away from the window in deep shadow. So it was of course flash to the rescue, not direct flash, but on-camera sideways bounced and flagged ....

This is the equipment : K7, AF-540FGZII, "Flag thing"




I had to meter for the ambient in order to control the very bright sun highlights which were going to be in the picture ..... if I didn't do this then these highlights could blow out and be an ugly distraction. So in Manual mode I fixed the settings at ISO400 / F8.0 / 1/180th, which just brought the sun highlights under control .... here is the shot without the flash, showing the extreme contrast in this sort of situation, and of course it demonstrates how difficult contrast control would be without flash ....




Then of course its flash to the rescue, with the on-camera flagged AF-540FGZII in P-TTL mode, the light being bounced to the right of the camera position into the walls and coming back onto the left side of my sons face ..... (my daughters whole face is illuminated more evenly because she is turned more towards the light source) ....




The result is an evenly balanced exposure mixing the ambient highlights and flash covered areas, taking care of the extreme contrast challenges in the scene. The angle of the bounce I hope gives a natural impression as the direction of the flash light appears to come from the brightly lit wall area ....

I hope this will prompt some more Pentax Users to try out some bounced flagged flash indoors when needing to take control over contrast, and when combining ambient and flash exposures will deal with dynamic range challenges. Hope you find it useful