Hello all, I have a few questions about lighting. I have always focused on Outdoor Natural lighting. I specialize in Surfing Photography. I recently have started shooting portraits and am starting to get into weddings. I need to get a flash. Sb-800. But was woundering if some of the Photogs on here could give me a bit of a rundown on good ways to shoot decent portraits indoors with on camera flash. I shoot with a nikon d200. Pretty much any lighting info is helpful. Thanks a buch.

A single flash, external on-camera, is not going to provide much flexibility for lighting possibilities, for portraiture or otherwise.

A much better plan would be to use multiple, off-camera flashes. Largely quoting myself from another (very) recent thread:

3 lights is a fairly minimal standard number of lights, and you would need to be a little creative in their use. Granted, you can do a pretty reasonable head shot with just a single light and some reflectors, but it takes some careful positioning. See the following thread for some hints:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=92550

To get a full repertoire of lighting setups I recommend 4 monolights, but 3 will do along with a portable flash.

To see why I recommend 4 lights look at the following setups:

http://www.geocities.com/glowluzid/p.../portrait.html

You can get a lot of stunning results with one flash, even on camera, if you know how to use it right. With an SB800 and the D200, you'll be able shoot off camera as well right from the start. The most important thing is that even if your flash is on camera, you don't want you light to come from on camera, because it will look flat, harsh, and boring. So if you are shooting on camera, bounce the light off the ceiling, a wall, or a reflector and you'll see an incredible improvement in your images. I could write more but others have said it better and more completely. So, without further ado:

Everything about on-camera flash:
http://www.planetneil.com/tangents

Everything about off-camera flash:
http://www.strobist.com

You could spend the next week absorbing the information on those two sites. Look for the tutorials on the right hand side of the pages.

I second the strobist reference for anything off camera, it's an awesome resource. This is easy to do with the D200 and CLS even for a single flash.

I also love my Gary Fong Lightsphere as a diffuser, great for throwing some balanced light around.

Originally Posted by Tim Kamppinen Everything about on-camera flash: http://www.planetneil.com/tangents

How did I not know about planetneil????????!!!!!! Strobist, for sure, but planetneil is GREAT not only for another point of view, but for some seriously clear and helpful basic info. Woohoo - I have some great reading ahead of me tonight!!!!!!!!!!

How about David Hobby and friends in general?

Don Giannatti - http://www.lighting-essentials.com
Joe McNally - http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/
Chase Jarvis - http://www.blog.chasejarvis.com/blog
Zack Arias - http://www.zarias.com

Off the top of my head.

Flash is my weakest link. Thanks for this discussion. I shall return for more reading and perusing!

Hey Cody!

I honestly can NOT recommend going into a wedding with a D200, let alone just one of them. Yes, you can certainly get the job done if you're highly experienced at weddings and you have all the right lenses and flash equipment, but a D200 is an older camera that leaves you zero room for error in low light. If you under-expose an image even just a little, at any ISO higher than 400 or 800, it's game over with image quality.

So, I would highly recommend saving up for a D700 asap. A full-frame DSLR body will be the biggest and best investment than any portrait / wedding photographer can make. Get the D700, plus a prime or two, and you'll hardly ever use flash.

I'm not just saying this as a gear snob, I'm saying this as someone who has worked full time as a portrait and wedding photographer for the past few years, and have used the D700, D300, D200, and D70. Yeah, all the way back to Nikon's 6 megapixel crop sensor days, good times! Anyways, yes I did "get the job done" with a D70 or D200. But it was not optimal, and it took a lot of carefulness.

Now, to answer your actual question- Yep, get an SB800 or two, they can be all you ever need for weddings if you're not obsessed with huge studio strobes etc. 2-3 SB800s can accomplish pretty much ANYTHING, with the right skill.

For indoor portraits, start basic and work your way up to advanced shooting. The most basic technique is a simple bounce off a wall / ceiling; using the right positioning of the subject and flash, you can get very flattering results that look almost like they were made in a studio. Then, studying any of the sites that people have linked to will help with figuring out off-camera flash. Personally, I learned pretty much everything I know about wireless flash from Scott Robert. :-)

=Matt=

(Psssttt... Matt - check the date on the OP's post )

Originally Posted by divamum (Psssttt... Matt - check the date on the OP's post )

Ugh, I hate it when someone resurrects an ancient topic and I don't look at the OP's timestamp. Oh well. Hopefully this cody person is well on their way!

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I'm not just saying this as a gear snob=Matt=

I love it!

Neil (with my emphasis above)