Simple Bounced Flash to Illuminate a Room at Night
We open the majority of our presents on Christmas eve which means it's really low light and normally my photos would be super high ISO and grainy. For the last few years, though, I've simply been bouncing the flash off my white ceiling and a bit of upper beige wall in order to illuminate the space. Positioning can be a bit tricky if you plan on shooting in multiple directions, as I do, but with some experimentation you can definitely find a spot to make it work.
My goal with these shots is not perfect light, or dramatic light, it's simply light. I don't want something super obtrusive with flash stands and modifiers that people will trip over since it's already a chaotic holiday scene, so I typically just use a speedlite on its flash foot set on our fireplace mantle. It's high enough that it's not flashing directly in anyone's faces.
Here's a pullback of my setup:
The flash is on the right side of the mantle, aimed at the upper right corner and ceiling. Our Christmas tree is camera left out of frame. The three main areas I'll be shooting is straight on towards the white couch, towards the two gray chairs in the corner where my brother and husband were sitting, and then towards the tree (camera left).
The lighting is not going to be even across such a large room, so I optimized for the couch where my parents and the kids were opening most of the presents. The images by the tree were the darkest but still well within an acceptable exposure. The ones near my brother were closest to the flash and the brightest. All were easy adjustments in Lightroom.
In this pullback you can see the tree and in the window reflection you can see the flash going off.
My settings changed depending on which direction I was shooting but I was typically between ISO 800-1600, f4.5 and 1/250. If I had been shooting without flash I would have been at ISO 6400 or above and still pretty grainy.
The couch photo needed the least amount of tweaking.
Here's me with our Bernedoodle puppy who is 5 months old. My hubby did a great job and even knows what I mean by back button focus! :-) - SOOC I had to lighten Ludo's eyes and tweak the exposure which was a little too bright.
The most troublesome corner was definitely nearest the flash. I had to pull down my exposure more in this corner and battled the glare on the photos from the wall.
It's far from a perfect setup - there are unwanted shadows in places, you can see the flash reflecting off the fridge or windows in places, but it works for me. It allows me to keep my grain wayyyy down and preserve these moments together. When I compare these to the years when I didn't use OCF, there's just such a huge difference in quality.
I hope you enjoyed your holidays and captured some wonderful moments together. Let me know if you have any questions.
Happy Holidays!
Kelly
