Lighting on a budget

Angry Jedi and Short Jedi return for a quick promotional photo before getting on with that whole 'saving the galaxy' business.

I'm using this Jedi and Tea theme to experiment with different techniques. I wanted to see if it was possible to simulate three-point lighting with a single flash, and this is the result. I'm reasonably pleased with it!

Method

-The camera was set to a ten-second exposure at ISO 100 with the aperture closed all the way and the flash disabled. Without flash, this gave an extremely dark image.

-Flash set to manual mode, 1/16 power.

-When the shutter was fired, I moved the flash to each position and triggered it manually. For key and back, direct flash with no filter or diffuser was used. For the fill light, I used the 430EX's built in diffuser which automatically set the zoom head to its widest setting.

-This all had to be done during the ten-second exposure. Furthermore, as the floor was carpeted I found that running about caused tiny movements to the tripod resulting in motion blur so I had to do this without moving from the spot, or making contact with the table or tripod!

I wasn't able to take particular care with the placement of the lights unfortunately, hence the suboptimal backlighting and glare on the table. Still, I think this provided a reasonable approximation of three point lighting!