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Off Camera Flash With A Classic Fruit Bowl

I wanted to get some practice today with using off-camera flash and food. Lighting can make or break a scene, so it’s always a good idea to get as much practice as possible with controlling light. My goals were to try and get some mood lighted images as well as fully lit images by relying on the two flash units as a primary light source.

The equipment: 

  • Two Yongnuo YN460-II set in S1 mode at 1 or 2 bars of power. I tried the built-in diffuser with bounce card as well as the opaque plastic diffusers that came with the flash units. They were mounted on Flashpoint stands.
  • The wide angle shots were taken with a K-7 and DA 14mm f2.8 lens.
  • The tight shots were taken with a K-5 and DA* 55mm f1.4 lens.
  • The cameras were set in X-Sync and wireless flash mode with output set to -2 for the trigger flash (the built-in flash units).

As you can see there, the two flash units firing once triggered by the camera:


Nice even lighting is obtained when using two flashes positioned on the sides of the subject:

A close-up backlit shot: 


The banana is very easy to photography, however the shinny orange would take more care to avoid strong highlights showing up:




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