Fill-flash in a rain forest?

[Heroique]

Here I am, lost in the Queets River valley, Olympic National Park (NW Washington).

This rain forest scene captured my imagination, but the broken sun produced a lot of contrast for Velvia-50 film to handle. :confused:

My main question is about using fill-flash, if possible, to bring up the shade on the left tree’s dark trunk?

Perhaps 1 or 2 portable Nikon speedlights, with pc cord connections? How might this change exposure settings? Or maybe I could use a different film? Or … just be patient, and wait for different light?

The forest was quiet – very little wind. :D

My spot meter reported:

Left tree trunk in shade = 7 ev
Central mossy-green trunk = 9 ev (shaded portion) to 13+ ev (sunlit portion)
Foreground sunlight = 13 ev
Background forest = 8 ev (shade) to 10 ev (sunlit)

I metered for 11 ev – understanding Velvia-50 would struggle to capture textured values less than 9 ev, and greater than 13 ev.

Tachi 4x5
Schneider XL 110mm/5.6
½ sec. @ f/22
Velvia-50 (shot ISO 50)
Leveled camera, added 20mm front rise
Epson 4990

[Ash]

I love that how it is. It looks more like an illustration than a photo, and I like that.

[Vaughn]

1) Wait for different light -- best would be just as a cloud begins to block the sun -- at that instant where there are still shadows, but greatly reduced in strength. This has happens a few times for me...if you are not too old, it might happen to you in your lifetime;)

Or wait for cloud cover -- still lots of contrasts then...but not too much.

2) How about pre-exposure to boost shadow detail?

Fill flash -- might work if there is not too much depth in the photo -- seems to me that the closest trunks would be affected more than further ones, creating the looks-like-a-flash-was-used effect.

Vaughn

[arca andy]

What ya Heroique
.....Fill in flash? It all seems rather complicated to me and you may not get that natural look. How about a couple of those large round fold out reflectors, the ones I have have a white side and a gold side. If you are trying to fill in one trunk they maybe enough just to bounce a bit light back in without overlighting the trunk. I like the shot but then here in England its grey and dull, any sunlight with shadows would be a bonus.

[Heroique]

What ya Heroique
.....Fill in flash? It all seems rather complicated to me and you may not get that natural look. How about a couple of those large round fold out reflectors, the ones I have have a white side and a gold side. If you are trying to fill in one trunk they maybe enough just to bounce a bit light back in without overlighting the trunk. I like the shot but then here in England its grey and dull, any sunlight with shadows would be a bonus.

A "fold-out" reflector. Perhaps a clever, portable idea...

So one might unfold it, lean it against a trunk on the far right (unseen), and bounce sunlight to the trunk on the far left. :)

I'd enjoy hearing a little more about Vaughn's "pre-exposure." I've never tried that...

[Vaughn]

Herouque,

I have never done it, but a friend worked with it many years ago. He was doing 4x5 tranny city landscapes and wanted a way to not only boost up the shadows a little but also warm them up...this was 25+ years ago, so I am not sure what film he was using.

Basically, one would give the film an even exposure of just enough light to bring the film along the toe right before the curve starts to rise. He did this by pre-exposing the film by shooting a white card (out of focus, also). I believe he used a warm-white card (basically a very light yellow) to help counter some of the blue in the open shadows (open to the sky).

The idea is that this very low exposure would only significantly affect the shadow areas, since there is very little light hitting the film there to begin with. The mid-tones and high lights receive so much more light than given by the pre-exposure, that the pre-exposure has little or no effect on them.

How well it worked for him I do not remember. Those more experienced with transparency film might know more. I know that it is a common procedure in B&W printing (called "flashing") and I believe that it was discussed by AA for B&W film.

Vaughn

[Bruce Watson]

You are never going to be able to fill all the shadows. If you concentrate on just the tree, you'll play hell getting the fill to look right as it goes up the tree. And it won't look natural because... it won't *be* natural. That part of the tree is *supposed* to be in shadow.

If you like this scene (and I think it's an excellent get that's well worth pursuing), use negative film that can handle the subject brightness range. Fuji 160S can handle this SBR without breaking a sweat. And comes in Quickloads too.

Else, wait for clouds. But you'll loose that snap you get from direct sunlight.

Me, I really like sunlight. I only shoot negative films. My favorite is 400PortraNC, but it's so expensive that my big user is 160PortraNC. Just excellent films.

[Stephen Fritz]

I agree with Bruce about shooting color negative film in these circumstances. I shoot in these conditions all the time and Velvia is absolutely the wrong film for this, unless you're after an effect.

If you insist on shooting transparency film, try E100G which will look far more natural and has beautiful greens, but it will never equal the quality of the color negative films in accommodating the scene brightness range you've described.

In earlier days, I tried Vaughn's description of the pre-flash method of lowering Velvia's contrast, but the technique does not work well with this film, although it does with others.

Of course you can wait a few minutes in the Northwest and it'll be cloudy enough to even out the contrasts!

[C. D. Keth]

In a similar situation I did a double exposure that worked nicely. The sun was going in and out of heavy clouds. The sunlit grove was too harsh and the cloudy-lit one was too flat so I double exposed and used half and half.

[arca andy]

A "fold-out" reflector. Perhaps a clever, portable idea...

So one might unfold it, lean it against a trunk on the far right (unseen), and bounce sunlight to the trunk on the far left. :)

I'd enjoy hearing a little more about Vaughn's "pre-exposure." I've never tried that...

Hello again from England, where the nature light always needs a litte help. You could support it with a light stand. Have a look at www.lastolite.com they have some interesting reflecting stuff but I am sure you have similar companys in the USA. Enjoy the sun

[adrian tyler]

i've worked quite a bit in forests lthe last couple of years, forests block out nearly all he light giving you and indoor/outdoor light scenario, i try to avoid bright sunlight and expose negs metering the shadows. then print cotrasting the midtones, here are the results:

http://www.maxestrella.com/home_home_eng.html

good luck!

[Bruce Watson]

In a similar situation I did a double exposure that worked nicely. The sun was going in and out of heavy clouds. The sunlit grove was too harsh and the cloudy-lit one was too flat so I double exposed and used half and half.

Now there's a thought. Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

[adrian tyler]

careful double exposing on all but the most solid tree trunks, be aware that the rest of these natural structures is of a flexible nature and even the slightest breese will move the things at the end of the branches, assuming you are interested in registering the 2 exposures!

[Ron Marshall]

careful double exposing on all but the most solid tree trunks, be aware that the rest of these natural structures is of a flexible nature and even the slightest breese will move the things at the end of the branches, assuming you are interested in registering the 2 exposures!

You're right, but he can mask out all but the shadow areas in the lighter shot with PS.

[Koge]

H.,

There were plenty of answers above, this is a different approach. If you wanted to try B+W film and develop in Formulary DI#13 or D23 two bath development to dramatically reduce contrast then you would have a negative that a negative that will capture ALL DETAIL in both shadow and highlights. But its B+W so if you have to hand color it or do it in Photoshop. You can use flashing or pre-exposure but in color its so much harder to control hue densities. My friend who uses Photoshop tells me you can shoot a few transparencies to capture both shadow and highlight detail then CS4 has an algorithim that sandwiches all to produce a technically perfect exposure. Good shooting.

[C. D. Keth]

You're right, but he can mask out all but the shadow areas in the lighter shot with PS.

I was talking about doing both exposures on the same sheet of film.

Anyway, I just waited until a calm period, figuring that most things would come to rest more or less in the same position. If you look really, really close you can see things that are ghosted and were different but there's surprisingly little. I like of like that it's there for those who take the time and care to look close enough to see it.

[Bosaiya]

You got sun? In Queets? Good thing you got a photo of it, nobody would believe you otherwise!

[Rakesh Malik]

Yeah, Danny said he got something like 10 minutes of sunshine when he spent two weeks in the Hoh once, or something like that :eek:

He must have been there in winter, although winter here in Seattle's already getting weird, what with the sunshine and all today. :D

[anchored]

Concerning using fill flash during daylight shots... I've used it a bit, keeping flash exposures low enough to only gently fill in deep shadows... not sure how well it would work on such a subject with as massive a depth of field as a rain forest, but works well enough on small shacks and the like.

Only suggestion to the original post would be to consider the use of remotely fired flash units instead of synch cords. Such devices as Palm Pilots or... as I use... Elinchrome Skyports.

On the rain forests... last year spent 3 days in the Hoh Rain Forest area... reportedly the wettest spots in the USA. Was hoping for light rain, or drizzle, or at least fully clouded skies. No... spent three days with bluebird skies and not a cloud to be seen. Rain forest shots with blue skies and harsh lighting just wasn't what I had in mind.

[Heroique]

Thanks for all the splendid ideas! And I hope more are on the way…

Next time I’m in a sunny rain forest, I’ll have additional techniques in mind, including double exposures, pre-exposures, a touch of wireless flash, and different films – such as those you’ve mentioned: 400PortaNC, or E100G, and even B+W film in two-bath developments. :rolleyes:

Strange, but after reading your responses, and especially Ash’s response, I’ve become a little more satisfied with how Velvia-50 blackened the left-side trunk after all – it certainly dramatizes the center trunk’s sunny green moss.

[walter23]

In a similar situation I did a double exposure that worked nicely. The sun was going in and out of heavy clouds. The sunlit grove was too harsh and the cloudy-lit one was too flat so I double exposed and used half and half.

Now there's a genius idea I'm going to have to remember. Figuring out how to shoot in the rainforest is on my to-do list :)

[john borrelli]

I like your image the way it is as well.

You have already received some excellent responses.

Velvia is a tricky film and outdoors with a range of 6 stops you are going to get dark shadows. A black and white film (without a contrast filter) really can shine here.

I don't know enough about fill flash from a single or multiple source. However, I do know that years ago, I made an image but thought something was off. I was able to return to the same spot take the same exact image without the "problem", everything was otherwise remarkably similar between the images and I found I did not like the corrected image as much as the original. Go figure?

One thing about your image that I find unusual is the color palate. I have used Velvia myself and the orange-red tint I am seeing here is unusual to me.

They are doing all kinds of wild things with exposures digitally these days, basically you try to photograph the same scene numerous times with a range of exposures and then combine all the images later in photoshop, the merge to HDR command is one example of this. For this image, you could take one exposure at 7EV, another at 9EV, another at 11EV, another at 13EV then merge them into one image. I have never tried these techniques but others have with success.

Another digital solution is to have the image scanned with a top of the line scanner.

A top of the line scanner may be able to dig out some detail from the tree trunk shadows. Once you have some real detail to work with, rather than just inky black shadow, you might be able to tweak some of that new shadow detail in photoshop. To test this, you should put the slide on a lightbox and use a loupe over the shadow areas, if you only see ink black Velvia shadow a better scan won't help, but you may see for example, that one half of the area in the foreground trunk that appears black does have some real image there that your scanner could not pick out and then a high-end scan might help.

Another approach would be to try the image with different enlargement sizes, sometimes a smaller sized enlargement works well with dark shadows in color images.

Nice image under difficult conditions.

[C. D. Keth]

Thanks for all the splendid ideas! And I hope more are on the way…

Next time I’m in a sunny rain forest, I’ll have additional techniques in mind, including double exposures, pre-exposures, a touch of wireless flash, and different films – such as those you’ve mentioned: 400PortaNC, or E100G, and even B+W film in two-bath developments. :rolleyes:

Strange, but after reading your responses, and especially Ash’s response, I’ve become a little more satisfied with how Velvia-50 blackened the left-side trunk after all – it certainly dramatizes the center trunk’s sunny green moss.

Also remember that even though we call it pre-exposure, you can do it after exposure, too. The film doesn't care so you don't need to plan for it and have a flashed sheet ready or anything.

[tgtaylor]

In a similar situation I did a double exposure that worked nicely. The sun was going in and out of heavy clouds. The sunlit grove was too harsh and the cloudy-lit one was too flat so I double exposed and used half and half.

That's an excellent idea Chris! Could you elaborate on the details? Specificially how did you meter and expose for both exposures?

Thanks,

Thomas

[C. D. Keth]

That's an excellent idea Chris! Could you elaborate on the details? Specificially how did you meter and expose for both exposures?

Thanks,

Thomas

It was simple as can be, really. I decided how I would expose in each situation and then underexposed each one by a stop to reach a proper exposure when both were combined. I heavily weighted the sticks and locked everything down extra tight to make sure I could touch the camera a bit between exposures and not move anything.

[tgtaylor]

It was simple as can be, really. I decided how I would expose in each situation and then underexposed each one by a stop to reach a proper exposure when both were combined. I heavily weighted the sticks and locked everything down extra tight to make sure I could touch the camera a bit between exposures and not move anything.


Thanks for the confirmation Chris!

I thought it over for a couple of days (which is what one should do to learn something new) and arrived at the same conclusion. This is a great technoque to use in a changing light situation.

Thomas

[C. D. Keth]

Thanks for the confirmation Chris!

I thought it over for a couple of days (which is what one should do to learn something new) and arrived at the same conclusion. This is a great technoque to use in a changing light situation.

Thomas

Yeah, it creates a nice middle ground when the sunny conditions are too contrasty and the cloudy conditions are too flat.

[Steve Wadlington]

Fred picker talked about this years ago also, it does give the feeling of glowing highlights and full detail in the forrest. I have had difficulty pulling it off without bluring though.

[C. D. Keth]

Fred picker talked about this years ago also, it does give the feeling of glowing highlights and full detail in the forrest. I have had difficulty pulling it off without bluring though.

Yeah, a very gentle hand is needed to recock the shutter and change shutter speed. You just need to lock everything down extra tight.